Basically what it was I had written an essay years earlier, before studying my doctorate, and one of my professors thought it looked fishy when another copy of the same essay showed up and tried to prove it was plagiarized.
Fortunately I cleared my name by promptly showing all professors and university staff involved my rough drafts for the essay (I had gone through 4 rough drafts) which had been saved years ago and I had just never deleted anything from that part of my life.
Basically the fact that I am a pack rat saved my bacon. I don't throw things out, especially electronic documents.
So word to the wise people, save your drafts and keep them for posterity's sake. You will not regret it.
What had happened however is that I had posted my finished essay (the one I was accused of plagiarizing) online and I had posted it without using my name - in other words, I had posted it anonymously.
Someone else (I don't know who) then copy pasted my essay off of the website and then submitted my essay as their own professor.
What the student didn't know was that they were handing in the same essay to the same professor (for the same class no less) as I had years earlier.
The professor reading my old essay felt it looked familiar, as if they had read it before. So they checked their records / refreshed their memory and remembered me.
Yada yada yada, the next thing I know they are accusing me of plagiarism, of selling my old essay for profit and were threatening to take my degree away from me. (Which they can legally do if they can prove plagiarism.)
Fortunately I did prove that the essay was mine by showing them my old rough drafts.
And I was able to show them the old forum website which I had posted the essay on. Still there, complete with the date it was originally posted. (And I could prove it was me who posted it because I still had the login and password to access the forum.)
My name was cleared, but having such a bureaucratic spotlight thrust upon me (especially when I had done nothing wrong) had made me not very comfortable about the whole plagiarism topic.
It took me years before I finally decided to write this post and talk openly about the incident. Now that I have my Doctorate I feel much firmer and safer about talking about the incident.
Universities have become increasingly aware that there is a lot academic dishonesty going on - especially amongst women, who make up 80% of customers for essay writing companies in Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener/Waterloo. It is such a problem amongst female students that it has raised the grade point average of all the women in universities that have essay writing companies near the university campuses.
I think the issue for men is that men are too lazy and too cheap to hire someone else to write an essay for them, they would rather just write a poorly written essay, hand it in and get a lower mark rather than hire someone to write the essay for them.
The companies themselves have also legitimized themselves by also offering resume writing, CV and cover letter writing services. And even online classes on how to write assignments for classes.
Once they have a student hooked on their services it is really just a matter of time before students start paying for essays using their credit card.
The problem is even more prevalent at big universities that have a lot of prestige. The more important the school is the more competition there is from such companies that are offering essay and assignment writing services.
But I do have an important question.
What happens when these people get out into the real world and need to write reports for the company they work for? Are they going to hire someone else to write the report for them?
I have even heard tales of people hiring other people to write / create presentations for PowerPoint.
Back when I was in university we were still using overhead projectors and slideshows during presentations, but now with PowerPoint the information for the presentation can be written down and designed electronically, saved as PowerPoint document (PPT), sent to the person who purchased it... and then that person presents the finished product and utilizes their acting skills at lying.
How is an university professor going to accuse them of plagiarism when they are presenting it in person as a PowerPoint presentation.
I wish they would bring back overhead projectors and slideshows. Just my 2 cents.
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