Get Gephardt: Homework-for-hire service offering coursework to Utah college students, but at what cost?

OREM — James Blaylock doesn’t need help with his homework. He is an accountant who graduated from BYU a long time ago. Still, when he got a flyer from a company called, The Write Choice Docs, he knew it was something that he could not just throw away. Its offer is not subtle: “We do homework for college students!”

“I was very concerned,” he said. “That is so brazen, and I’m so disturbed by it.”

Aside from cheating being, you know, wrong, Blaylock is also concerned about what this could mean for a young person’s future if they get busted.

“Somebody’s going to get caught,” he said. “Their life is going to be ruined.”

He asked me to investigate.

My first thought was, “This is probably just a scam trying to steal your credit card number.”  But, using investigative reporter skills that I learned in school by actually doing the work, I was able get past the anonymous website domain and to track down where The Write Choice Docs, LLC is located: Hampton, Georgia. Turns out, it is an actual business registered with that state.

I reached out to the company through its online chat. I got a call back from someone who refused to give me his or her name, but the Caller ID closely matches the name on business registration. The caller wanted to know when the story would air so they could “be ready for the influx of orders.” Then the person hung up on me before I could get a question out.

“I think it’s crazy,” said Scott Trotter of Utah Valley University. “We bring students here so they can succeed, they can learn how to succeed. We teach them, how they can do that, without cheating. They have the ability to do it. And here you have a company that’s encouraging them to do it. I was shocked, actually.”

Trotter says punishments for cheating can vary, but worst case, a student could get booted from school.

The Write Choice Docs seems to know that people who use their service could get into trouble because, buried in the terms and conditions, they talk about how their papers are merely meant to be used for “reference and / or learning purposes.” And they do “not condone the act of using our products to achieve higher marks within educational institutions, nor do we vouch for the results.”

“If we don’t follow rules in our society, things break down,” said Blaylock, who says The Write Choice Docs is offering students the wrong choice.