Damian R. Bonazzoli was a senior staff clerk with the Massachusetts Appeals Court by day. By night, he was Student-for-Hire, a man who would write you a twenty page term paper for $300. According to an expose in the magazine Commonwealth:
Bonazzoli promised a “quality grade” if he was hired to write the 20-page paper. “I’m here to help you ace your term paper,” one of his Craigslist ads proclaimed. Another ad bragged, “I have authored over 200 judicial opinions and memoranda.”
As part of his pitch, Bonazzoli sent along, unsolicited, his resume, which revealed that he was employed as a senior staff attorney for the appeals court — a job that pays him $94,000 a year — and a summa cum laude graduate of Boston College Law School.
Bonazzoli wanted $300 to write the paper on physician-assisted suicide. “My academic history, coupled with my work experience, gives me an edge not many writers have,” Bonazzoli said in an email exchange about the 20-page assignment. He also claimed that 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 criminal prosecution.”
It turns out, however, that Massachusetts state bar was less sanguine about his efforts. In this order, the Supreme Judicial Court suspended Bonazzoli's license for six months.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.