Being blackmailed by the dissertation company

Hello, I am being blackmailed by the dissertation company say that I need to pay them money to get copyrights of the dissertation, I made few changes to work and submitted my dissertation, I am worried, they know my name as I made a bank payment to them and I have not yet replied to their messages yet, I don't know what to do could you please help me

Perfect. Don't reply to anything they send you; in fact, don't even read it. That's the quickest way to get them to leave you alone. Any response from you at all is the equivalent of a fish tugging on the lure at the end of a fisherman's line and will only prolong their harassment and result in additional threats. They're bluffing, but that's largely a moot point, anyway, because even if you were to pay them anything, they'd only continue blackmailing you for more money, which is exactly what just happened to another victim who recently started a very similar thread here. Block every means by which they contact you, do not respond at all, regardless of what they threaten to do, and please name the company right here in this thread to help others avoid becoming victims of the same scam.

In the US, report the extortion to the FBI through: ic3.gov/Home/ComplaintChoice and in the UK, report it to actionfraud.police.uk/how-to-report-fraud .

For more details, see these posts in these previous threads:

https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/blackmailed-mill-company-6787/#msg86845 (Posts # 2, 4, & 26)

https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/blackmailed-money-assignment-6764/2/#msg87477 (Post #79)

https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/exam-maker-help-6860/#msg87486 (Post #3)

@Steff4838

There seems to be an increase in the number of UK students seeking advice on being blackmailed.
Firstly ignore and block the company. Do not enter into communication with them. If they send a letter from the Dept of Education (only a UK based writer will know about them) ignore it as it will be a fake.

You should not be asking a freelance writer or essay company (wherever located) to write essays for you as it is unlawful under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022.

Have you thought about using AI in the future? It's cheaper than any freelance writer and may help you.

Hey @Steff4838. Can you give us an update on the blackmail front? How have you dealt with the blackmailers so far? Have they stopped trying to contact you? Please let us know what is going on with you at the moment. We worry about the students who have been blackmailed. Some of them really end up in trouble because they lack guidance when it comes to properly addressing the problem. I hope that you have gotten out of this jam safely.

By the way, I do agree with @a1writer, you should consider using AI for writing your essays in the future. You can clean it up and you can also make it a far more original work than any hired writer can ever do for you.

@Steff4838. Sorry for the unfortunate scenario. I think, it is good for students to be cautious. You must exercise caution to detect scammers. Several indicators necessitate vigilance. Regrettably, I disagree with relying on AI for academic papers. Institutions employ sophisticated plagiarism detectors, culminating in dire consequences. In essence, students should prioritize vigilance. Engaging service providers who embrace a pay-after-service model may circumvent fraudulent encounters. This approach empowers meticulous scrutiny of deliverables, enabling remuneration post-satisfaction. Ultimately, in navigating the academic landscape, astute awareness remains paramount.

First, honest writers always provide entirely original work; that's how one earns clients' trust and establishes a roster of long-term repeat clients. Second, it's actually AI programs that are, by definition, incapable of doing anything besides plagiarizing each and every idea in each and every AI-generated essay. Third, whether an essay is written by a human writer or generated by AI programs, it's impossible ever to "clean it up" or "make it original" if all of the ideas in the essay are still those of whomever wrote the essay or source authors whose ideas were plagiarized by AI programs that harvested those ideas without ever referencing their original sources. At least with an honest human writer, the ideas in the essay are always original.

By contrast, AI programs, at best, can only regurgitate the ideas of others; at worst, they cite completely fabricated sources that don't even exist, often "creating" sources, by combining parts of the titles of multiple sources and representing them as having come from books or journals that might be real, but that never actually published any such article. That's because AI programs often simply harvest portions of unrelated journal, book, and totally non-authoritative blog titles the exact same way that they harvest their substantive ideas. Fourth, if plagiarism is really the concern, it's still 100% plagiarized, even if students rewrite every sentence of the essay, because the ideas expressed originally came from an uncredited source. "Rewriting" the essay (well) will usually allow it to pass a simple plagiarism scanner that only flags similar strings of words, but all of the ideas are still plagiarized, regardless of how they might be rephrased using different words. At least a (good) essay provided by an honest human writer typically represents all-original ideas, whereas AI programs (at best) necessarily rely entirely on unoriginal and uncredited ideas plagiarized from real sources and/or "cited" from nonexistent sources that are entirely fabricated, even when the writing, itself, isn't necessarily atrociously bad, which it often is, as well.

@Steff4838
Hi I'm currently in this situation just wondering what happened and did they take any action
Thanks in advance

Not possible. Please block the company.

Choose a service that sells copyrights along with the dissertation.

In my experience, no commercial essay site ever sells copyrights; in fact, they expressly state that the company retains exclusive copyrights and that customers must "cite" any portion of any work provided by the company. Always do a quick search (CTRL + F) for "copyright" on the web page and/or the FAQs/TOS/Guarantees page to see whether the company or writer you're considering retains copyrights or allows customers to own the exclusive copyrights to any paid work. If you want to own all the rights to the work that you purchase, simply make sure that you use a provider who allows customers to do so.

@formerstudent
My company was a scammer and they do not exists anymore right now but they are demanding copyright certificate now. In this case what will happen?

They gave me the paper which was unusable and I did not use their paper. Now their website is not exist anymore. In this case can they still demand a copyright certificate even after not using their paper?

There's no such thing as a "copyright certificate" (in this context). Any demand by an essay company for payment in relation to a "copyright certificate" is simply an excuse for their blackmail, because "We have to pay for your copyright certificate" sounds better than "We're blackmailing you because we want your money."

Copyright is automatic and belongs to whomever created the work. The creator may choose to register the copyright and apply for a certificate of copyright registration, but its only purpose is to be able to prove copyright ownership in a lawsuit against someone else for infringement, such as for using the work without the copyright owner's permission. If the copyright owner doesn't intend to sue someone for infringement, there's no reason to spend money on the application fee for a certificate of copyright.

Transferring copyright to someone else, (such as to the customer who paid for the work to be created), requires no "certificate" and nothing more formal than anything in writing that says the creator is transferring copyright to the customer. That writing can be as simple as an email or a TOS note saying "customer owns exclusive copyright" or even a statement on a website that says "customer owns copyright to any work" etc. The customer doesn't need any kind of certificate, either, unless the customer intends to sue someone else for using the work without his permission.

All of the guarantees and other promises or representations posted on any website, including about copyright ownership, are always enforceable as terms of your agreement with the service provider, even without any other "writing." Stick to providers whose websites state that the customer owns the copyright to any work and just save a screen shot of that page. That's your proof of copyright transfer from them to you. There's almost no conceivable reason for you to worry about registering your own copyright, but if you choose to do so for some reason, just do it yourself for a small fraction of the ridiculous amount of money demanded by scam essay companies blackmailing you about it. (They're obviously never going to use your money for any "certificate," either, if you're actually gullible enough to pay them.)

So, stop worrying about all these laughably stupid demands about "copyright certificates" because they're nothing more than a way to trick you into believing that those demands are something more than exactly what they are: blackmail. As always, ignore, delete, and block any and all messages from the company and just get on with your lives.

@Steff4838
Hi Steff, may I know how all that ended. I just faced all this today. They even know my institute name and my thesis was graded too.

As I suggested in this other related thread, it's not necessarily in your best interest to continue posting more details about your project/transaction on any public forum:
essayscam.org/forum/gt/blackmailed-thesis-research-company-located-7056/

The most important thing is simply to post the name and url of any of these criminal blackmailers so that other potential victims can avoid being scammed. Beyond that, the fewer details you publicize about your project, the better, for your own sake.

I think the situation was eventually resolved for the OP. It might have ended badly for the person since the OP has gone radio silent at this forum. It is also important to note when the student no longer discusses anything at this forum. I am starting to believe that those who go quiet decided to pay up, so they do not want to discuss it any further here. Perhaps they were warned against doing so or something. They just want to leave the blackmailing part of their academic life behind.

Hopefully, they just took my advice to stop posting more details on any public forum.

@FreelanceWriter can you please help me with a essay mill blackmailing me? I just need some advice!

I responded to your other post with suggestions for using the search function on this forum to find 37 posts where I've previously answered just about every possible question about what to do (and what not to do) if you're being blackmailed. To help make this forum as helpful as it can be to everybody else, the other thing that you definitely should do is immediately identify the site/writer responsible for blackmailing you.

@FreelanceWriter

I have the site/writer responsible for blackmailing me but i don't want to make things worse for myself until this saga is over as relevant officials are involved now

I really meant it more as a general suggestion to anybody who's actually been blackmailed, so that other potential victims know which companies or writers to avoid, which, I believe, is the main purpose of this forum. However, once they've already contacted your school, or (more likely, I'm guesssing), managed to trick you into contacting your professor yourself and admitting to it, unnecessarily, (either way), there's really nothing more that they can do to you.

They actually ended up contacting my school

That's unfortunate. About the only thing customers can do to make that kind of thing impossible is to use only providers who will provide you with their (verifiable) real names and locations, because blackmail, especially in the developed world, simply cannot be perpetrated successfully without anonymity.