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.
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/...