Hoax event in Australia on Mon 9th September 2024

In January this year, an email from a person claiming to be from a Sydney company that had provided the model answers for the subject landed in university inboxes.

It warned staff not to extend their investigations to other subjects and ended the email with a photo of a bomb.

“If such situation happens, we will launch some bomb attack to save everything for the students,” it read. “Yes, you heard right. It was a b o m b a t t a c k.

“If it gets to that point, it’s not good for the university or the safety of staff.”

Police were called and a building was evacuated. NSW Police is investigating but has determined that the email was sent from overseas. No one has been arrested.
Authorities are becoming increasingly concerned about the behaviour of contract cheating providers, who are usually based overseas leaving the police and the government powerless to intervene. The practice involves students paying other people to do their work for them.

An internal report revealed that a dramatic surge in contract cheating at Sydney University last year was largely attributed to one first-year philosophy subject, with 440 allegations – 40 per cent of all reports at the university – linked to the course.

Hundreds of students were accused of using model answers from a third-party source across three assignments within the subject late last year, it said.
A Sydney University spokeswoman said it was not aware of further threats towards staff and considers the bomb threat as the tactic of an individual agent or provider.

However, the institution had seen evidence of blackmail and other pressure against students, she said. “Companies are shifting their promotional strategies to be more discreet and make detection more difficult, and we continually adapt our strategies to counter this threat,” she said.