Thursday, June 22, 2006

Essay Fraud 2

[Update] This post prompted a fierce discussion between multiple parties, which you can find in the comments. Comments are now closed.


Following my posts on Essay Fraud and Cheating 2, I have received an email from Essay Fraud which reads as follows.
"You have blatantly libeled our organization. We do not sell any papers! As such, we have no 'competitors'! We will grant you 72 hours to remove this libelous post. Rest assured, your little misunderstanding will earn you quite the heap of legal problems if you do not comply."

I am always happy to receive comments from readers, including corrections. Accordingly, I have altered the wording of my post Cheating 2, and I am happy to adopt Essay Fraud's own description of itself as a watchdog organization. I note that Essay Fraud invites applications for membership from organizations satisfying certain criteria although I was unable to find any members named on its website. I was also unable to find a US address on its website.

Meanwhile, what are we to make of the threatening email? Quite the heap of punctuation, wouldn't you say? I can't quite place the idiomatic use of English ...

So I'm puzzled about the true purpose of Essay Fraud. It provides hundreds of names of what it claims are foreign sites, and no names of bona-fide American sites. So it could be used as a directory of the sites it claims to deprecate. Meanwhile, by complaining about the scandal of foreign papers, it effectively draws attention to the wider scandal of an outsourcing market in term papers. It identifies certain risks for students who wish to buy essays, and may have the effect of encouraging some students to write their own essays instead. And it exposes some systemic risks in the American education system, which educational institutions may wish to consider.

So the web presence of Essay Fraud has certain effects. I accept that by giving publicity to Essay Fraud, I may be helping to amplify some of these effects. So be it.

9 comments:

  1. I ask you not to be deceived by this so called “ profitless “ web site, the real purpose of this web site, in views of many persons is to fight competitors of another essay mill company- Essaytown.com( the company that according to some sources is located in Russia). Moreover, as this web site might indicate this organization could be located in Russia as well (http://www.innovation-team.ru/index.php?page=portfolio&group=15).
    So far neither essaytown nor essayfraud has presented ANY evidence that they are located in the USA.
    Your assertion and your suspicions as far as this organisation is concerned are not new ones. You may read more about it here http://hiramhover.typepad.com/hiramhover/2006/01/a_consumer_watc.html as well as here http://www.freelancewriting.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=03c6ab72f0c2257137459e1b2308a10c&topic=1435.15 you also might be interested to know that this organization has been trying to insert its link in various articles on plagiarism in Wikipedia, though this “ profitless “ organization has been unsuccessful in convincing prudent and intelligent members of Wikipedia that the web site Essayfraud(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plagiarism) see under the number 19, is designed to fight plagiarism, because there are several grounds to believe that the real purpose of this web site is to fight competitors of Essaytown.com- notorious paper mill which is listed here(www.artsci.wustl.edu/~iteach/chapman_papermills.pdf). Students are encouraged by this University not to seek any assistance from this company and rather turn to their professors and tutors instead.
    While essayfraud( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SarahTeach&oldid=41165407) does attack some term paper mills, it looks like it is connected with other essay writing companies moreover, it encourages students to use the web sites with so called essayfraud recognition logo, which in my opinion is nothing less than indirect advertisement of essaytown and companies affiliated with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Ukrainian essay mill owner (a.k.a. "Nancy") who posted this nonsense is determined to undermine EssayFraud.org by putting as much misinformation out there as he possibly can. (This proves that EssayFraud.org is making a serious dent in essay mill sales. These criminals wouldn't invest so much time libeling EssayFraud.org if we weren't hurting their bottom lines!) The whole essaytown thing has gotten really tiring. The Ukrainian essay mill owner uses circumstantial information (such as how we happen to use the same, very popular [PR8] Web host [Bluehost] as essaytown) to convince uniformed people that we own essaytown. That is both ridiculous and insulting. But what do you expect from a determined criminal who also makes the laughable claim that we are Russian? He makes that absurd claim simply because we hired a freelance programmer (prior to launching our site) through scriptlance.com to help us with a minor part of our complicated forum setup. We had absolutely no idea that he was Russian, as programmers don't exactly post their nationality as part of their programming skills! That programmer, without our knowledge, soon listed EssayFraud.org's forum as one of his work experience credits on his personal, Russian language Web site. That is completely out of our control. Of course, the Ukrainian essay mill owner ("Nancy") couldn't wait to twist that information in his favor by claiming that we are Russian.

    Students have grown absolutely indifferent to the standard anti-plagiarism message. We at EssayFraud.org can't be the only people who recognize that fact, can we? Our unique approach entails enabling students to share their horror stories in dealing with fraudulent essay mills. Students may be willing to risk getting caught for cheating, but are they also willing to risk being ripped off and losing hundreds of dollars to some overseas scam outfits? We think not. Young people value their money, especially college students who often do not have much expendable income. We are extremely successful in convincing students to avoid fraudulent sites and to simply write their own papers. That's been our goal from the beginning.

    We would appreciate constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement.

    Thank you,
    Elizabeth
    www.essayfraud.org

    ReplyDelete
  3. On its homepage Essay Town announces "We Support Essay Fraud".

    Are there any other essay writing companies that display the Essay Fraud logo?

    How is Essay Fraud funded? Is Essay Town a member of Essay Fraud? Does Essay Town provide any financial support to this "watchdog" organization?

    In the absence of transparency, neutral observers are likely to draw their own conclusions from partial and inconclusive clues linking the two organization. And from the issues to which EssayFraud representatives are apparently devoting most of their attention and energy.

    This is one of the reasons for our continued interest in this organization here on the POSIWID blog - as an interesting illustration of the extent to which we may infer purpose from the actions of people and organizations.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Richard, all it takes is a simple link search to see that there are literally hundreds of sites that display our logo:

    http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.essayfraud.org+-directory+-press+-blog&srch_type=0&FORM=QBRE

    We allow them to display our logo because they voluntarily subjected themselves to our rigorous background checks through which we concluded that they are legitimate, verifiable corporations with customer service phone numbers. Nothing about the Ukrainian sites is verifiable, and they know it, which is why they hate EssayFraud.org so much. They can't pass our verification screening because all of their "company" information is bogus. So, they take their only other option, which is to try to undermine our credibility any way they can. The Ukrainian criminals pick on essaytown because it may be the most visible target. We know from our traffic logs that essaytown brings to us more traffic than any other site. The criminals must somehow know that, too. What you need to understand (as someone who is not familiar with the mindset of the Ukrainian criminals who spread misinformation about EssayFraud.org) is that they desperately NEED EssayFraud.org to fail, and they will type absolutely anything--no matter how ridiculously false--to accomplish their goal. Their shady livelihood depends on it. They make their living ripping people off, and you are HELPING them, Richard! Remember, POSIWID. Think about what you are doing . . . .

    Thank you,
    Elizabeth
    www.essayfraud.org

    ReplyDelete
  5. Elizabeth

    Thanks very much for the information. I followed the first hit on the search you suggested, which led me to a website called PaperDue.com, offering papers for $8 per page and displaying your logo. I guess this must be an unapproved use of your logo, because on your website you advise students to distrust websites charging less than $16 per page. Will you be taking legal action against PaperDue?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes Richard, it is really very, very simple... you just put one telephone number from one of the companies “ approved” by essayfraud, for instance, from this one //www.superior-termpapers.com/( 1-888-774-9994), copy and paste it in Google search box, to find out how many “ essay writing companies” have this telephone number http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1-888-774-9994&btnG=Google+Search

    Or Elisabeth did you want to say” web sites”, not companies…..?! I guess you do not expect everyone to believe that dozens of the companies COULD have ONE telephone number?! I would presume that it would be very convenient, but it would be an insult to the intelligence of other people...in my opinion it would be more realistic to assume that one company might have dozens of the web sites….

    I hope that attacks on ESSAYTOWN would not insult you... (I understand that you can be very sensitive, especially if your “non aggressive” and “correct” I would say “exemplary noble” behavior toward the competitors of essaytown and the companies affiliated with it is taken into account).

    However as so many persons are accused in lying by this so called “authoritaive site” I would like to remind the definitions of two simple words: lie and fact, before I go any further.

    Lie- :” something that misleads or deceives” and fact:” something that has actual existence”

    First when you claim that only Ukrainian and others essay mills owners oppose to your web site, let me ask you who in this discussion(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plagiarism) was a Ukrainian essay mill owner?! Is Hiram Hover a mill owner?! Is ElKevbo an essay mill owner?! Is AlabamaBoy an essay mill owner?! Please clarify….
    Again the link about discussion on essayfraud(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plagiarism) where your lies about copyright legislation of the USA and many other issues have been exposed… but not by essay mills owners, neither by Ukrainians and Pakistanis… by but Americans.
    So the assertion that Ukrainians essays mills owners or any others are only opponents of essayfraud is a lie, the notion that many Americans scholars who are really fighting plagiarism are opposed to your web site is the fact.


    If you really are so resolved to convince that your site encourages students to write their own essays, then I must say that this “noble intention “seems to end at various, others than essayfraud organization, online forums and can hardly be discernable at your “forum” of “horrified’ students as you put it.

    Strangely enough, I see in the forum of essayfraud that the administrators of your forum are more disposed to encourage “students” to use so called “approved web sites”, and provide the link with the list to these so called “approved web sites” It would be nice if you could at least dilute your various messages with actual encouragement for the students to write their own essays. (Not for the purpose of real encouragement of students to write their own essays, naturally- I am certain it has never been, is not and never will be the purpose of your web site, but just because some people might visit your web site and see this “encouragement” for themselves). The visitors can be gullible, but they could hardly be stupid.
    So I guess that the notion that you encourage students to write their own essay is a lie, the assertion that they are encouraged to use the service of another paper mills is the fact.

    Yes, I would agree with you that the story about essaytown is getting old. As far as evidence of its location are concerned. This web site has been famous for its attempts to encourage other people not to take the words of other companies that they are located in the USA. http://web.archive.org/web/20050207015958/www.essaytown.com/warning.html ( note so many similar features with the design and content of essayfraud) however it has not been able to provide any evidence THAT THIS COMPANY IS located in the USA itself. Rather peculiar type of promotion for the business that encourages others to fight off shoring.

    If you have conducted such a “thorough” research before “issuing” your logo to this company, maybe you FINALLY will present SOME PHYSICAL evidence to the public that this company (as well as your own) is located in the USA?1. So far as I am concerned I do not have ANY evidence that ANY of these two companies- ESSAYTOWN OR ESSAYFRAUD is located in the USA.

    It looks like ESSAYTOWN has been unsuccessful in convincing students that they should purchase essays for astronomical prices, and then it has decided to create another web site for the above mentioned purpose. Once it has been created, the design and content of the page essaytown warning page had been changed. Essayfraud has been dismally unsuccessful in convincing American public that the purpose of its web site is the fighting of plagiarism, and the same depressing destiny of the warning page of essaytown awaits the web site essayfraud

    So I guess, with so many coincidences each person should draw its own conclusion whether the supposition that essaytown and companies affiliated with it own this web site is a lie or a fact. Also everyone should ask the questions why these companies have been unable to provide ANY EVIDENCE that they are located in the USA.

    Yes some linguistic and grammar slips were evident right at the beginning. For instance the representatives of this organization claimed “to transfer the copywrite” an even mentioned this word “ copywrite’ on their web site, apparently meaning the following word “ copyright”.
    Yes as the owner of this blog claimed, the expression “ profitless organization”, which essafraud so frequently employed in the writing of their press releases, means useless.

    Guys, let me remind you once again, the meaning of word “profitless” is useless, that is why your explanation that: “we used the term "profitless" simply to communicate the fact that we do not sell any products or earn any income.” is childish. Just look at the examples mentioned and find out where exactly the word mentioned is used to describe the meaning of “non profitable” ( without financial gain as you implied) as this word means only without BENEFIT. http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/useless,


    Why?! Because the profit in sharp contrast with RUSSIAN LANGAUGE where it is used to describe financial remuneration (the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions) ONLY, has several meanings in English and the meaning that you used is “without benefit” but not without “financial gains’ as you imply.

    Are not there too many grammar and philological mistakes for “native” English Speakers? Apparently there are; so it looks like the assertion that both these companies are other foreign outfits is apparently the fact, the claim that they are American companies is apparently the lie.


    But most of all, their claim that transferring of the copyright is against American law is total unsubstantiated LIE. They have not provided ANY law to back up their claims; instead they have just listed several state laws that forbid selling of the term papers, if the person who sells it has grounds to believe that the paper will be submitted by student as his own.
    The fact that you have been unable to provide ANY evidence is the fact, the statement on your web site and essaytown that this is against American law to transfer copyright is LIE. Guys if you are so disposed to provide the visitors of your web site with true information, please remove finally THIS FALSE statement from your web site.

    I understand that this might be against the practice set by the essaytown, as this comment from the BBB on essaytown(http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff121866.htm) might suggest and the following comment on essayfraud should leave no doubts whatsoever about the purpose of this web site, essayfraud(http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff184413.htm)


    But again one should follow Amercian copyright legislation, not the policy set by some term paper mill.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Richard, you have once again posted inaccurate information about our organization. The $8 per page charge at PaperDue.com is for prewritten documents. The sub-$16 warning on our site refers to customized documents, which is stated quite clearly on our home page:
    "Charges less than $16.00 per page for custom writing"

    Do you bother to read closely before posting comments? We ask that you admit this new oversight and stop posting misinformation. This is the fourth piece of misinformation that you have posted.

    Richard, please take note. The name "Adam" is bogus identity #3,089,643 for the Ukrainian criminal. "Adam" is quite obviously the same person as "Nancy."

    "Adam," please work on your broken, Ukrainian-skewed English. It's very difficult to follow. By the way, how's the weather in Kiev today?

    Below, I address the criminal's absurdities in the order in which he spewed them.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Company" vs. "Site"
    ------------------------------------------------------
    For the record, Ukrainian Kingpin, I never stated that all of the sites linking to EssayFraud.org are owned by separate companies. I stated "sites," not "companies." Look at the text, imbecile. (Do you work for "The National Enquirer" on the side?) There are hundreds of sites that are owned by approximately 30 unrelated companies.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    EssayFraud.org's Dissuasive Impact
    ------------------------------------------------------
    The number of actual posts in our forum is in no way an accurate reflection of our impact. We average many hundreds of unique visitors per day, but only 1 or 2 daily posts in our forum. This is because the vast majority of visitors read the complaints in our forum, but do not sign-up for a username that enables one to post messages. In our opinion, many people who once considered cheating decide against it after reviewing the personal rip-off stories at EssayFraud.org. In fact, we have received dozens of emails from visitors who appreciate the information that we provide, and many do, in fact, directly tell us that they have decided to save their money and do everything themselves. "Adam," you know all too well that this is absolutely true, which is why you invest so much time attacking EssayFraud.org. Your income has obviously decreased substantially since EssayFraud.org emerged. Your orders are way down. Let the waterworks begin . . . . We feel so badly for you. ;-)

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    So-called "Opposition" to EssayFraud.org
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    In response to your claims that some non-essay mill owners have opposed EssayFraud.org, you are correct, but only to a certain extent, and in different context They do not directly "oppose" the existence of EssayFraud.org. They may like to see some changes in our methodology, which we have been working to accommodate, but they certainly have no problem with us uncovering term paper fraud. So, please stop skewing the truth. The fact is that some of the members at Wikipedia initially rejected to granting EssayFraud.org a link because they felt that the site was not yet "authoritative" enough to justify a link in Wikipedia. You ceased the moment (with your 15 different usernames at Wikipedia) and contributed your ridiculous, fabricated claims about essaytown affiliation and other nonsense, which skewed other Wikipedia members' opinions. Again, good job. Enjoy the breather while it lasts, but the end is approaching for your criminal empire.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    Links
    ------------------------------------------------------
    We provide no direct links to any essay mills--period. I'd love to see your proof to the contrary. Numerous visitors have asked our forum moderators to provide a list of the sites that we have been able to verify as legitimate corporations. At one point, I believe that one of our moderators did post a link to a YAHOO search results page that merely showed the different domains that link to EssayFraud.org. That's hardly a plug for any particular company. Regardless, we already took it upon ourselves to remove that Yahoo URL because we anticipated that you would somehow skew that, as well. (On a side note, you sure do make good use of the outdated, irrelevant pages in Google's archive that no longer apply to our active message or content.)

    ------------------------------------------------------
    EssayTown = American
    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Adam," you are the biggest coward on the face of the planet. You want EssayTown to prove its location in the United States? No problem, scumbag. They post a phone number on their site, via which Richard or anyone else can speak to any one of a number of different, AMERICAN employees at their corporate offices in New Jersey. Richard, feel free to place a call and ask absolutely any questions about the company that you wish. You can also ask for their verifiable, corporate information, which you can easily verify yourself by contacting the State of New Jersey. This is exactly what we did as part of our verification process for essaytown.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    Ukrainian Essay Mills
    ------------------------------------------------------
    Now, cowardly "Adam," why don't you finally tell everyone which essay mills you own so that everyone can judge YOU and see exactly why EssayFraud.org is against your practices? What are you so afraid of revealing? Tell everyone the domains that you own, coward. (Everyone, I absolutely guarantee that this lying scumbag will not reveal his fraudulent domains.) Let's see what type of excuse he gives THIS time (if he responds again at all, as he always disappears when backed against a wall). He'll just show up later, at a different forum, using fake username #3,089,644 and then start the same, bogus claims all over again. "Adam" is nothing more than a worthless, sniveling, criminal piece of trash. His arguments are weak, redundant, 100% circumstantial, and almost entirely fabricated. We have proved wrong everything he has falsely claimed, and we will continue to do so quite easily.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    EssayFraud.org vs. EssayTown
    ------------------------------------------------------
    As we have already explained to this Ukrainian criminal in numerous forums, after verifying EssayTown, we requested that they (and numerous other sites) remove any references to particular, fraudulent sites. All parties agreed that EssayFraud.org would be the sole source for information and complaints about fraudulent sites with fabricated corporate identities. That is why the content of essaytown's warning page changed.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    Libel
    ------------------------------------------------------
    FYI, "Adam," at least Richard has acknowledged that his accusations about EssayFraud.org have been inaccurate, and we respect him for that. YOU, on the other hand, are the ignorant, Ukrainian criminal who has been spreading all of the misinformation from Day #1 that has contributed to Richard getting the wrong idea about our organization. We must applaud your conniving efforts, scumbag. Your misinformation campaigns do work for a short period of time, but they always backfire slowly but surely, as we methodically tear apart your bogus claims. This time is no different.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Copywrite"
    ------------------------------------------------------
    Careless typing mistake. Nothing more. Happens to everyone once in a while. "Adam," you are an absolute simpleton for even calling out this completely inconsequential typo. Your obvious desperation has sunk to an all-time low. Your criticism is also quite hypocritical, considering the atrocious nature of your grammar, spelling, and word use in this blog.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Profitless"
    ------------------------------------------------------
    As I'm sure Richard will now readily admit, his definition of the term "profitless," as applied to EssayFraud.org, was completely incorrect. Since you like to reference online sources, "Adam," I'll return the favor with a reference that, unlike Richard's (and by ignorant extension, yours), actually applies to our FORMER use of the term on EssayFraud.org in the proper context:

    profitless
    adj : without profit or reward; "let us have no part in profitless quarrels"- D.D.Eisenhower; "How weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world"- Shakespeare [syn: unprofitable]
    http://dictionary.reference.com/search?db=*&q=profitless

    Further proof from all major, online dictionaries:

    http://www.bartleby.com/61/32/P0583200.html
    http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/profitless
    http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/profitless.html
    http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/p/p0583200.html

    ------------------------------------------------------
    EssayFraud.org is Russian?
    ------------------------------------------------------
    Absolutely hilarious. This one takes the cake. I can't believe ol' Vladimir is still chugging away at this nonsense. As previously stated in numerous forums, he makes this absurd connection simply because we hired a freelance programmer (prior to launching our site) through scriptlance.com to help us with a minor part of our complicated forum setup. We had absolutely no idea that he was Russian, as programmers don't exactly post their NATIONALITY as part of their programming skills! That programmer, without our knowledge, soon listed EssayFraud.org's forum as one of his work experience credits on his personal, Russian language Web site. That is completely out of our control. (It's inconsequential, anyway. It reads nothing more than "Tuning and the editing of forum IPB for site www.essayfraud.org.") Of course, the Ukrainian essay mill owner ("Adam") couldn't wait to somehow twist that information in his favor by claiming that WE are Russian. "Adam," you are an absolute joke. For everyone's reference, here is the Russian programmer's Web page:
    http://www.innovation-team.ru/index.php?page=portfolio&group=15

    Now, here is the translated version of that Web page:
    http://tools.search.yahoo.com/language/translation/translatedPage.php?tt=url&urltext=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.innovation-team.ru%2Findex.php%3Fpage%3Dportfolio%26group%3D15&lp=ru_en

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    Copyright Law and Academic Materials
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    We have asked our Internet attorney to provide us with a detailed report on the statutes that specifically condemn transfer of copyright of "academic materials" from merchants to students. In the meantime, we have removed from EssayFraud.org all references to the legality of copyright transfer. We shall see how the Ukrainian criminal will attempt to libel EssayFraud.org now that his sole source of ammunition no longer exists. Richard, you must realize that Mr. Ukraine advertises "copyright transfer" on all of his fraudulent essay mills as a means of convincing students that plagiarism will be easier and less risky. That is a crucial selling point for him! The sooner you realize this fact, the better.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    "Adam," your crime spree is ending.
    ------------------------------------------------------

    As always, we would appreciate constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement.

    Thank you,
    Elizabeth
    www.essayfraud.org

    ReplyDelete
  8. Please forgive the couple of spelling mistakes in my previous post. It was very late, and I was exhausted. I just wanted to acknowledge this myself, before Mr. Neanderthal accuses me of being Russian again.

    Thank you,
    Elizabeth
    www.essayfraud.org

    ReplyDelete
  9. Elizabeth

    You accuse me of posting inaccurate information and of not reading your website.

    Your website indicates that US essay writers won't lift a pen for less than $12 per page. So how can PaperDue sell papers for $8 per page? Prewritten papers should if anything cost more than custom papers - unless of course PaperDue sells the same paper to several students. So I can't see how you can possibly approve of PaperDue's offer without betraying the principles of quality and non-plagiarism for which your website stands.

    And please don't try to tell me about the English language. You don't even seem to understand that the very quotes you are using support my interpretation of "profitless" and not yours.

    I am now bored with this debate and closing all further comments.

    ReplyDelete