I don't get a lot of cheating on exams but I do get a lot of plagiarism. I would say 1 out of every 15 papers I get is plagiarized. Some of my favorite instances of cheating from the past :

- my first case was when I taught at Mountain west university as an adjunct. I caught three football players cheating on an exam. They had a nice system of communication going and would answer each question together. I really didn't have a ton of evidence but pressed it anyway because that is what I thought I was supposed to do. The football coaches were not pleased with me but they ended up taking my side. two of the players (both scrubs) were kicked off the team and another was suspended for some time. A few years later he was the star of the team and then spent some time in the NFL.

-Two girls once turned the same paper into me. They handed them in right after another and ended up being the only pink papers in the whole stack.

- I caught one girl cheating on an exam and then she came to me a few weeks later asking for a letter of recommendation.

-In order to avoid cheating I now give different versions of the same exam (different order) to my students. I have a system that easily identifies each exam to make it easy on me. Now when I see a student copying off another I just let it happen. They get a note back from me with their F explaining what happened.

-Just this week I had a baseball player take a picture of the first few pages of an exam. I have a lot of baseball players in my class this year and he is the smartest one. He was the first of a bunch to take the exam. I don't have separate versions for this particular exam. Instead of saying something I decided to have a little fun. After his exam was over I went and changed the order of the exam. By golly his baseball buddies all missed the first 25 questions of the exam. I haven't decided yet what to do with him but I figure that is punishment enough for his buddies.