There is even a cheating website now to help professors identify cheaters. Of course, if you are willing to fork over the cash, you can have a paper written just for you. This does make the purpose of such an education questionable. All of these sites that offer papers to students claim to be strictly offering them as reference and that they do not condone any copying of their material whatsoever. I suppose that from a legal standpoint, it makes perfect sense, but being a student myself and being in direct contact with the pressures of term papers, I don't think that is always the only use of those papers.
Plagiarism is a very serious accusation.
In fact, in Texas, Governor George Bush recently made it a crime to sell term papers at any scholastic institution. But besides this, the only other penalties lie with the purchaser of the paper who will most likely be with regards to their employer or educational institution. Here is an interesting example of a cheating policy. H.E. Huntington Middle School in California has quite a comprehensive cheating policy considering it being only a middle school. It is as follows.