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Comment by sjy | Hacker News Reader

Why don’t these cheating services ever get investigated by the police? They are obvious, organised, profitable frauds. How is this any different to selling fake IDs or stolen usernames and passwords?

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It's not clear that it's illegal. The federal fraud statutes cover obtaining "money or property" through false statements. A prosecutor would have to convince a jury that the site is engaged in conspiracy to commit fraud and that a degree is property. If I were on that jury I'd convict, but it's a riskier bet than prosecutors usually like. I'd be interested in seeing a well crafted law here that makes it obviously a crime, although federal felony is a bit harsh but that's what let's you coordinate across state lines.

Not a lawyer.

I was surprised that it was possible to prosecute faking admissions to colleges as a crime, but apparently you can.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...

This would seem to be similar. Perhaps it can be prosecuted.

I think that case [1] is largely based on bribery, a recognised form of honest services fraud [2] for which it’s not necessary to prove that the defendant ‘obtained money or property.’

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/investigations-college-admis...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud

Thanks for prompting me to look a little further into this. Leaving aside the legal technicalities, I suppose there is a fundamental difficulty here in that academic cheating itself generally is not (and in my opinion shouldn’t be) dealt with as a legal issue. I think that it should be illegal to profit from it, but it does fundamentally differ from other kinds of fraud because the person who pays isn’t deceived, and the person who deceives isn’t paid.

The U.S. mail and wire fraud statutes are notoriously broad and on their face, seem to cover academic cheating services. Indeed, there is a precedent to this effect: United States v. International Term Papers, Inc., 477 F.2d 1277 (1973) [1]. However, I think it was overcome by the Supreme Court’s rejection of honest services fraud in 1987 [2]. While Congress reinstated the concept [3], the Supreme Court cut it down again in 2010, limiting it to bribery and kickbacks [4].

So that could explain why the newer online services haven’t been prosecuted federally. Several U.S. states have statutes explicitly dealing with this issue [5], but I suppose they are not being enforced for jurisdiction or resourcing reasons. Perhaps the newer legislation in Australia [6] and New Zealand [7] will be more effective.

[1] https://guides.law.fsu.edu/ld.php?content_id=4996427

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNally_v._United_States

[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1346

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilling_v._United_States

[5] https://guides.law.fsu.edu/termpapermills/statutesandlegisla...

[6] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2020A00078

[7] https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/...

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