I am being investigated by CFAI

“The PCP is in receipt of information that alleges that following the 2012 June exam, you disclosed information under username Passme related to the exa content via postings on websites…”

oh man. I think you will have to tell them that it was a general discussion and not specific question discussion that was asked in the exam - This can only be done by compiling your past posts.

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the evidence will come from the specific posts they are looking at. If there was any hint or clue that it may have came from the exam ( any specific words that link to the actual test question) you could be dead in the water.

If someone started a thread and asked a question that was a topic that happened to land on the exam, that would look suspicious, but your chances of successfully winning an investigation could be much greater if you have a history of posting random questions. I honestly don’t know

I d rather let them void my exam result than voiding my canadidicy.

I will take it again with confidence, but if this is serious enough that CFAI says goodbye to me…I really dunno what else to do.

Thank Chad for the help.

^ your response is really helpful…psychologically…how I wish the outcome was as simple as a warning…The letter itself to me looks pretty darn scary…

is investigated the same as accused?

I guess so…

damn damn damn…

I think you’re missing a key point. I believe the worst exam discussion threads were killed off (maybe hidden? I don’t know) everything you see public now is the after-board-cleansing. CFAI may be holding onto evidence that’s more severe than the search posts you can see now

Is it a violation to ask for mock exams and textbooks from previous years?

How many people just resigned themselves to permanent-lurker status? Undoubtedly this will be impact of such censorship. Old saying–kill one, scare one thousand.

Good luck passme, I hope you come through this.

Check this out:

http://www.cfainstitute.org/ethics/conduct/Pages/candidate_sanctions.aspx

Heres the important part for your case (I assume):

“Following the exam, a Level II candidate, Randall Lucas, posted on his blog regarding his experience at the CFA exam and mentioned topics covered and material not covered on the exam. At the time of the blog posting, the CFA exam was still being administered around the world. The Professional Conduct Program investigated the matter and found that the candidate engaged in the conduct and thereby violated the CFA Exam Rules and the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. The candidate accepted the sanction of Public Censure and Voiding of Exam Results.”

He posted while the exam was still going on, which I would assume is worse than discussing the exam after the fact (although both would be violations). But given this above, I would not think suspension in the program is a likely punishment. Just my two cents, really dont know however.

The administrator of the forum is a charterholder. I believe he has an obligation to report or comply with any investigation regarding potential CFAI Code of Conduct Violation. This includes giving the CFAI user name identities. The same thing happened a few year back when a group of people tried to create a document detailing exam questions that they could remember. Below is an excerpt from the CFIA Professional Conduct website giving the details of this specific instance. Unfortunately, this is likely the punishment you will be looking at. You will probably not be the only one because many people were writting about questions that were obviously taken directly from the exam.

  • Following the exam, two Level II candidates, Anurag Jain and Nana Kweku Nduom, used Analyst Forum, an internet chat forum, to contribute, solicit, and compile June 2009 Level II CFA exam content. The information was compiled into a spreadsheet and further offered to other candidates via the internet forum and other internet sources. The Professional Conduct Program investigated these matters and found that the candidates engaged in the conduct, thereby compromising the integrity and security of the CFA exam in violation of the CFA Exam Rules, Candidate Pledge, and the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, specifically Standard VII(A) – Conduct as Members and Candidates in the CFA Program. Both Mr. Jain and Mr. Nduom requested a Hearing Panel. After consideration of the evidence in each respective case, the Hearing Panels determined the candidates’ conduct of compiling, soliciting, and distributing CFA exam content violated the CFA Exam Rules and the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct and imposed the sanction of Five-Year Suspension from Participation in the CFA Program and Voiding of Exam Results on each respective candidate.

I hope for passme’s sake you are correct. Maybe it was the soliciting the material on other sites that got them the stiff penalty.

Here is a link to Analyst Forum’s privacy policy. From my read, and I’m no legal expert, I don’t think they would share information.

http://www.analystforum.com/privacy-policy

This is a good point. if I were CFAI, I would consider this obligation to exceed and override the AF privacy policy.

I think there was a case where CFAI actually investigated a charterholder about some very secretive proprietary model some company used, and they demanded access to that model even though it was legal property of that firm. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see them requesting email addresses from an anonymous forum.

For those that feel worried, if you got your results and didn’t get anything in the mail, chances are you are fine.

As much as this seems to hold true, then this should be stated in the website’s privacy terms and conditions. eg, ‘if your post violates CFAI Code of Conducts, we may forward your email and contact details to the CFAI’.

But I think at a minimum, AF should disclose whether this activity has occurred in the past, or continue in the future (as stated by someone else).

Sounds like CFAI picked up your email address from one of your posts, then matched it to their records. But wouldn’t they still need to get you to say “yes this is me - fair cop”, which you’ve kind of already done by posting about it…

Anyway, the CFA is really clear about not discussing exam content FULL STOP. Given what went on here after the exam, I think there are a bunch of AFers that should consider themselves very lucky if they are not themselves ‘investigated’. I just don’t comprehend why anyone would take this risk???