Are essay mills committing fraud? A further analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 fraud act (UK)

Michael J Draper,Callum Reid-Hutchings

doi:10.1007/s40979-019-0050-4

Michael J Draper, Callum Reid-Hutchings

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-019-0050-4

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Abstract

Many strategies have been proposed to address the supply of bespoke essays and other assignments by companies often described as ‘Essay Mills’ with the act of supply and use being invariably described as ‘contract cheating’. These proposals increasingly refer to the law as a solution in common with other action. In this article, the lead author revisits work undertaken in 2016 as a result of recent legal and extra-legal developments to assess whether the UK Fraud Act (2006) might now be used to tackle some of the activities of the companies involved, by comparing their common practises, and their Terms and Conditions, with the Act. It was previously found that all sites have disclaimers regarding the use of their products but there were some obvious contradictions in the activities of the sites which undermined those disclaimers, for example plagiarism-free guarantees for the work. In this article, we ask and consider the question whether this is still the case having regard to the impact of a change in the law by the UK supreme court and recent action of the UK Advertising Standards Authority. We also consider whether a call for a new offence to be created which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours of these companies is still justified.

Highlights

Main text In this article we consider the development of law and policy in the area of contract cheating and in particular, whether or not recent changes in UK law, action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority and the guidance issued by the Quality Assurance Agency for the UK (QAA 2016, QAA 2017) have had an impact on the knowledge and state of mind of UK registered companies engaged in supplying essays to students for financial gain and the consequences for the operation of the Fraud Act 2006
There has been an increase in the number of websites which we consider to be misleading having regard to advice given in the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rulings: a rise from 31% to 68%
Is criminal prosecution likely? We have demonstrated that recent legal rulings make it easier to impute the knowledge of human agents to corporate Essay Mills and the context of QAA guidance and ASA rulings, as well as associated media attention, may assist in making a finding of dishonesty under the revised objective Ivey test in relation to the Fraud Act more likely

Summary

Introduction

In this article we consider the development of law and policy in the area of contract cheating and in particular, whether or not recent changes in UK law, action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority and the guidance issued by the Quality Assurance Agency for the UK (QAA 2016, QAA 2017) have had an impact on the knowledge and state of mind of UK registered companies engaged in supplying essays to students for financial gain and the consequences for the operation of the Fraud Act 2006.Our findings in relation to the action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority have a wider implication for the current debate in relation to proposed legislative responses to contract cheating across the common law world, in particular Australia and the Republic of Ireland.In earlier work, Draper et al (2017), and Draper and Newton (2017) considered the main actors in contract cheating: a student, their university, and a third party (often a company or ‘Essay Mill’) who completes assessments for the former to be submitted to Draper and Reid-Hutchings International Journal for Educational Integrity (2019) 15:11 the latter, but whose input is not permitted.

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Conclusion