An Ill-Advised Way To Make $300

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Damian Bonazzoli is a senior staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court. According to the ABA Journal, he likely makes a five-figure salary. Apparently that wasn’t enough money for him. His entrepreneurial side business got him caught up in a journalist’s term-paper-trafficking sting operation.
Colman Herman wrote a piece for Commonwealth magazine exploring the “shadowy underworld” of college papers for purchase. The journalist went cruising on Craigslist for people advertising thesis-generating services. He e-mailed 66 people. Among the 62 respondents was Bonazzoli:

Damian Bonazzolli (sic), who promised a “quality grade” if he was hired to write the 20-page paper, responded to an initial inquiry by sending, unsolicited, his résumé. It indicated he is a senior staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court, a job that pays him $94,000 a year, according to state records. He wanted $300 to write the paper on physician-assisted suicide.
In an email exchange, Bonazzolli (sic) [FN1] said turning in a paper that he had written would not be illegal. “I am aware of no state or federal statute that prohibits such a practice. This is not the equivalent of, say, lying on a federal employment or tax form,” he said. “Could your school take disciplinary action? Of course. But that’s quite different from a criminal prosecution.”

We hope no law students have hired Bonazzoli to do legal analysis for them. His is not up to par when it comes to Massachusetts law.


Beyond being unethical, Bonazzoli’s side business is illegal:

Passed in 1972, the Massachusetts statute outlaws the sale of a “theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or the written results of research” if those involved know or have reason to know that the material will be submitted for academic credit and represented as original work. The law also prohibits individuals from taking an exam for someone else… Violators are subject to a fine of not more than $100, imprisonment for not more than six months, or both. Sixteen other states have similar laws, and most colleges and universities have policies on academic integrity prohibiting students from passing off someone else’s work as their own.

Legal Blog Watch links to the relevant statute.
Despite the laws against this, there are numerous businesses (Papergeeks.com, 15000papers.com, Schoolsucks.com, and echeat.com) that advertise their services online, with slogans like “It’s not cheating, it’s collaborating.”
Stetson’s law school dean weighs in to say that it’s a big problem nationwide:

But Darby Dickerson, dean of the law school at Stetson University in Gulfport, Florida, and the author of a 2007 article on academic plagiarism in the Villanova Law Review that said “cheating and plagiarism are as common on college campuses as dirty laundry and beer.”

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If you were among those laid off by Goodwin Procter, it sounds like the kids at Stetson might have some work for you.
FN1 – The journalist misspelled Bonazzoli’s name with two “l”s. According to his listing with the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers, his last name has just one “l”. Unfortunately for his search results, we’ve corrected the record on this in our post.
Term paper trafficking [Commonwealth]
Appeals Court Lawyer ‘Traffics’ in Term Papers [Legal Blog Watch]
Mass. Appeals Court Lawyer Reportedly Offered to Write Term Paper for $300 [ABA Journal]

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