Paid Term Papers Sites Exposed

Psssh....I got some free term papers for you. I just need yours.

Do those paid term papers sites actually work, or are they just another spammer scam to lure you pay 20 bucks a month or worst, charge you 20 bucks PER PAGE! This is my investigation of the underground world of paid term papers sites.

The Operations

Casper Smith is the head of MegaEssays.com, a paid term paper operation that's been pelting the Internet with claims of ten thousands of term papers. I'm almost positive his name is a pseudonym. But does he know that Judy Garfield is not my real name?

That's how I introduced myself last month, when I sent Casper an e-mail asking to join his term paper crew. I fibbed to him that I was a user of his site. (For authenticity, I lightly sprinkled typos and grammatical errors throughout the message.)

I wanted to be one of the affliate of Casper's sites. In today's world of term papers, a sales affiliate setups up a "free term paper site" on behalf of a "paid term paper site" or sponsor, who assigns the affiliate a special tracking code to include in his free site. For every signup the affiliate's free site generates, he is paid a commission by the site operator. Sponsors also provide promotion, website software, and other support to help their affiliates successfully market the site.

I tried flattering Casper in my e-mails, gushing that he had tapped into a timely and lucrative niche. But Casper doesn't let just anyone join MegaEssays.com. After I sent my introductory e-mail as "Judy Garfield" from a free webmail account I had created, he asked to know the name of the person who had referred me to the site.

A sign at on the affliate sign up page said affiliates got paid up to 25 percent commissions for every customer. After spotting the affliate sign up page, I decided to contact MegaEssays.com and ask about joining.

A few days later, an e-mail arrived from Casper. He said I'd make "a valuable addition to the team." His message included information about how to log in to my account at Megaessays.com, and he gave me his AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) screen name in case I had questions.

I gain access to a huge term paper database!

When I signed on to MegaEssays.com affiliates page for the first time, I saw a page where my sales stats would be displayed. A preferences section included a form where I could specify account numbers for my commission payments. There was also a page where I could download website software to install on my web host. It included CGI-BIN and graphics files and how to install them on typical UNIX servers.

But what really caught my eye was a note at the site that insisted all affiliates include the base database of term papers. The huge archive was available for download, containing thousands of term papers. Affiliates were instructed to add this database to their free site to make it appear bigger than it really was.

To my amazement, a quick search revealed thousands of term papers with topics ranging from Hamlet to Chemistry. As I scanned the huge database, I was startled that some of the term papers contain e-mail addresses. Hundreds of people with aol.com, yahoo.com, msn.com and even dot-edu had submitted their term papers.

Other addresses jumped out at me. Lots of people from prestigious universities, including Yale University, University of Michigan, and University of California at Berkeley had submitted a term paper. These people were supposed to be the cream of the crop--why were their term papers in this database?

Scrolling through the database, I realized someone had tried to sabotage the database. Term papers with a continuous "Fuck you Fuck you..." were mixed in with real ones. The list also contained term papers ripped from other sites (with their included header and footer with the website's name). These fraudulent term papers must have been submitted by parents or teachers and I understand their rage.

I decided to try contacting some of the e-mail address I found in the database. What were these people thinking when they handed over their term papers to these sites.

The shocking truth awaits

A student from Stony Brook University in New York, whose e-mail address was in the database didn't return my e-mails. I got a similar lack of response from another student in Clark Atlanta University. Then Steve Woolruff from Florida State University responded to my e-mail.

"I'm not sure how they got my essay. I didn't submit it to them," said Woolruff, a sophomore at FSU.

Woolruff reported that he had indeed submitted his essay to another term paper site, MyTermPapers.com, but was unaware that it was included in a paid term paper site. He had submitted his essay to gain access to a free site, but did not know how a copy of his essay got included in this database. As proof of ownership of the paper, he forwarded me a copy of the original paper dating back to early 2001.

Stuart Kim, a student from University of San Francisco, had seen a situation with his paper. He had given his paper up in late 2002 in exchange for access to NetEssays.net. He was also unaware his site was being distributed in this database.

"I totally didn't give them permission to distribute my paper. I can't believe they're using it to make money," said Kim, who is now a senior.

"So many essay sites require you to sign up and submit your paper, I can't keep track of where I submitted," said Becky Poor, a senior at San Diego State University. She told me that when she is looking for a paper, she just submits her paper to sites that require it, not bothering reading the terms of service. But Poor said that with so many sites requiring submission of papers in exchange for viewing the site's free term papers, she had simply submitted the same paper over and paper.

With a few more exchanges of e-mail from these students, I had finally come to an understanding when I paid a visit to Google, God of search engines. I knew that my fellow MegaEssays.com affiliates had the same base database of term papers. I searched Google for "Armand Bombardier Father of the Snowmobile" (note the quotation marks, this is important), the title of a paper which one of the students I had been in contact submitted. Not to my surprise, the paper showed on a number of sites bearing the same looking and feel.