In the Matter of the Complaint Against

 TERMPAPERS, TERMPAPER LIBRARY, INC.,
 3160 "O" Street, N.W. and
 2605 "P" Street, N.W. at
 Washington, D. C.  20007

 P.S. Docket No. 2/188

 August 5, 1974

 Rudolf Sobernheim Administrative Law Judge

 APPEARANCES:
 Thomas A. Ziebarth, Esq. 
 Consumer Protection Office
 Law Department U. S. Postal Service
 Washington, D.C.  20260 for Complainant

 Martin Fogel, Esq. 461 H Street,
 N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 for Respondent

This is a proceeding by Complainant against Respondent under 39 U.S.C. 3005 which authorizes action against Respondent on evidence satisfactory to the Postal Service that Respondent "is engaged in conducting a scheme or device for obtaining money or property through the mails by means of false representations."

Complainant alleges that Respondent is engaged in such a scheme in the sale of term papers, reports and other materials to students at colleges and universities whose custom is solicited by advertisements in various publications (Compl. Ex. 1, 7, 8).

Specifically, Complainant alleges that:

"(3) By and through the use of such promotional activities and materials, Respondent offers to sell and, in fact, does sell term papers, reports, and other materials - both prewritten and original - to students at colleges and universities who remit money through the mail;

"(4) By means of the scheme described herein, Respondent knowingly cooperates with its student customers by furnishing instrumentalities which enable and encourage such students to submit the papers they have purchased for academic credit, thereby falsely representing them to be the product of their own original research and writing."

Respondent in its answer admitted that it was promoting a service through newspaper ads, catalogs and order forms intended to inform prospective customers of its service and to induce them to remit money through the mail or to come personally to its premises for the purchase of its services. It also admitted the genuineness and use of the materials attached to the complaint as Complainant's exhibits 1 and 2. It denied, however, that its activities constituted a scheme or device in violation of 39 U.S.C. 3005.

At the hearing held herein Complainant presented testimonial and documentary evidence. Respondent limited itself to cross- examination of Complainant's witnesses. Both parties filed post-hearing briefs.

1. Respondent is engaged in the business of selling term papers under the name of Termpaper Library, in part through the mails. Its principal, A. Pedersen, stated to a Postal Inspector, who testified for Complainant (T 18), that 90% of Respondent's business was conducted through mail orders.

2. Respondent admittedly (Answer, par. 2) receives money for its product through the mails.

3. Those responding to Respondent's advertisements receive Respondent's current catalog of term papers with the following letter (Comp. Ex. 2; see also Compl. Ex. 9):

"Dear Student:

Thank you for requesting our catalog. The following pages list all of our current papers that we have on file. You will note that they are alphabetically indexed by subject and are coded for easy ordering.

All orders from our files are mailed the same day received. We try to encourage Air Mail Special Delivery for faster delivery. As you will also note, all orders for original papers require seven (7) days to process.

Every month we try to update our catalog with all the new term papers for our library. Your name will automatically be placed on our mailing list for new supplements to our catalog.

Since some school administrators are not in line with our thinking, we will keep our correspondence with our clients in the strictest of confidence.

We are requesting the name of your school so we can be sure not to send the same paper to your college again.

We recognize the fact that our papers are tremendous time-savers, however, we would like to stress the idea of using these papers for research and reference purposes only.

Sincerely,

Catalog Coordinator"

4. Respondent's catalogs (Compl. Ex. 5, 9) list term papers on a large number of topics generally included in courses given at institutions of higher learning.

5. Upon receipt of the catalog the customer selects one or more of the term papers listed in the catalog and upon ordering the same and paying therefor is furnished the paper. On the back of the last catalog page there is an order form for listed papers as well as an order form for an "original paper written to specifications." The latter cost $4.85 per page for an undergraduate and $5.85 per page for a graduate paper. The listed papers sell at $2.50 per page.

6. Two term papers were admitted in evidence. One on Kierkegaard (Compl. Ex. 6) was four pages in length with four of Kierkegaard's works listed on a separate sheet as bibliography. The paper is reasonably well constructed with ample citations from the philosopher's writings. The other was a paper on prison reform (Compl. Ex. 10), eight pages in length with 12 footnotes on a separate page taken from six items of the bibliography which included two books and four items from periodicals or newspapers. It is a rather rambling and superficial paper with notable typographical errors.

7. Complainant called an associate professor of library science and former reference librarian at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., as an expert witness (T 35-6). The witness testified that he was experienced in library research and in teaching library science courses and used term papers in examining his students (T 42; cf . T 46-7).

8. He testified that neither paper was helpful as a research tool since whatever bibliography each contained could be assembled in a few minutes of library research (T 40-41) and would save the student no research time (T 49). As an examination or term paper he considered the Kierkegaard paper well done, provided its length was within the limits set by the teacher (T 39) and usable as a starting point for further inquiry (T 44). He considered the prison reform paper to be badly phrased and styled and, if he were to correct it, to require a great deal of blue-pencilling (T 40). However, neither paper was as valuable a research tool to a student as a good encyclopedia article (T 45-6).

9. Respondent advertises in student (Compl. Ex. 7) and in what may best be described as "counter-culture" newspapers (Compl. Ex. 1, 8) which are addressed to students at a particular institution or read by young people of student age and likely to be attending a college or university. All the cities in which Respondent published advertisements are the seat of colleges or universities.

10. Term papers are examination papers which are required of students in many courses and through which they are expected to demonstrate their ability to research a topic and present it and their ideas thereon in their own words. The purpose of term papers is frustrated and the college or university misled as to the students' accomplishment and ability if they present and falsely represent what is essentially the work of others as their own.

11. Based on the foregoing detailed findings of fact and the record as a whole, I find:

a. Appellant offers its product, i . e ., term papers from its library or composed to the specifications of the purchaser, to students, as shown by the advertising media utilized by it and by its letter to potential purchasers of its product (Compl. Ex. 2, 9).

b. That letter, addressed to "Dear Student", makes it plain that Respondent, notwithstanding mild cautionary language at the end of the letter, expects its product to be used by the purchaser as that for which it is offered: to wit, a term paper, sold ready made or made to order, which the student purchaser falsely submits to his teacher as his or her own work.

c. Although Respondent mildly cautions its readers to use its term papers only for reference and research, Respondent's term papers are nearly worthless to this end.

d. These conclusions are supported by the explicit statement in Respondent's letter to its customers that their correspondence with Respondent will be kept "in the strictest of confidence" (Compl. Ex. 2, 4th par.) since the schools are not in line with Respondent's thinking in furnishing to students term papers to be represented falsely to teachers and schools as the student's own work.

e. These conclusions are further confirmed by Respondent's request for the name of the school attended by the purchase of a term paper and its statement that it will not send the same paper to another customer at the same school.

f. Respondent is engaged in the business of furnishing term papers to students who, as Respondent knows or must be deemed to know, submit them in their courses in order to obtain academic credit therefore under the false representation that such term papers, actually purchased complete from Respondent, are their own work. For these term papers Respondent obtains money or property through the mails.

1. Respondent is engaged in a scheme or device for obtaining money or property through the mails by means of false representations within the meaning of 39 U.S.C. 3005, as alleged in the complaint.

2. The false representation here is not one by Respondent to its customers but one which Respondent enables them to make to the institution of higher learning which they attend. Such false representation made by the customer of Respondent to third parties is, nevertheless, the means by which Respondent obtains money from the customers. For without enabling the purchasers of its term papers to represent them falsely as their own work for academic credit Respondent would not be able to sell its product to its student customers.

3. These false representations by its student customers to the schools they attend are, therefore, the linchpin of Respondent's scheme. The record, especially Respondent's letter to its customers, set forth in full above, is convincing evidence in law not only that Respondent must have been aware of the false representations to which the use of its term papers gives rise but that Respondent contemplated that they would be made by its purchasers and willingly helped them to do so.

4. Such false representations made by the purchasers of Respondent's product to third parties, are within the scope of 39 U.S.C. 3005 which is not limited by its express terms to schemes or devices in which the false representations are made by the seller to the purchaser of a product or service. While the latter is the situation commonly encountered, this fact does not preclude the application of the statute to other and perhaps novel situations which fall within its stated scope.

5. The foregoing view of the broad scope of 39 U.S.C. 3005 was articulated in United States v. International Term Papers, Inc., 477 F.2d 1277 (lst Cir., 1973). While the administrative law judges of the U. S. Postal Service are not bound by this decision, it is persuasive in the highest degree and is followed here. As indicated in prior findings of fact and conclusions of law, the record here fully supports the conclusion that Respondent as sender of the term papers contemplated and knowingly cooperated in the "scheme" which involved misrepresentation by the purchasers to innocent third parties based on the materials sent by Respondent. Loc.cit., supra, at p. 1280.

6. Accordingly, an order in the form attached, as provided by 39 U.S.C. 3005, should be issued.