The article sounds halfway honest and highly fabricated. You can't verify any of it.
Also:
I work at an online company that generates **tens of thousands of dollars a month** by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students.
[...]
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company's staff of roughly **50** writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
Since he said "tens of thousands of dollars a month" we can assume his company makes less than $100,000 / mo. For hypothetical reasons, let's say the company makes $100,000/mo. There are 50 writers, as he mentions. That means that the most a writer could hope to earn in a month would be
$100,000 / 50 = $2,000.
It is probably less, since the head person is also probably taking a cut, but since we don't know about that we'll leave it out.
My point is that this "ghost writer" / "shadow scholar" / "academic mercenary" is making less than $24k/yr. working full-time for an online cheating support group. And that's without health benefits.That's a dirt-poor salary and he sounds like a huge loser. No wonder he's trying to write a book about his experience - he wants a way out.
What's more likely? That a person with his skill set is working a $24k/yr salary job without benefits, or that the article is unreliable? One can see through this
reducto ad absurdum that there's some key information missing here... It doesn't help that the article is anonymous and
absolutely nothing can be verified.
Maybe the whole article is a lie.