Hundreds of blogs have linked to this in the past week, so I might as well pay it some attention, even though I'm doubtful that it's a hoax. The basic story is as follows: Some guy was contacted out of the blue via IM by a college student who wanted to know if he would write a paper on Hinduism for her. She had searched for people who mentioned the word 'Hindu' in their AOL profile and came up with him. To make a long story short, he agreed to write the paper for $75, but all he did was slap together a paper by shamelessly plagiarizing texts found on the internet, and then he blew the whistle on her by posting what he had done on his blog. Boing Boing initially cried hoax, claiming that the story had been cooked up to promote the comedy troupe whose site the story is posted on. But then Boing Boing backed off this claim. Personally I have no idea whether or not it's a hoax. Nor can I think of any good way to find out. But it seems plausible enough to me that something like this could happen.