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At the helm of the company embroiled in a large-scale academic cheating scandal is a Chinese-born businesswoman. The enterprising 30-year-old has used her accounting degree to build a lucrative ghostwriting service, called MyMaster. This pitch has seen the MyMaster company turn over at least $160,000 during 2014 and return more than 900 fraudulent assignments to students prepared to hand over up to $1,000 for the work.

An estimated 10,000 students a year are subjected to disciplinary action across Australia's universities, most of them for plagiarism allegations.

Hundreds of WA University students have been caught cheating in exams and plagiarising course work. During the past three years, 545 students have been picked up for plagiarism at Curtin University, 304 at Murdoch, 270 at the University of WA and 182 at Edith Cowan University.

Students from the University of New England may have their degrees stripped from them if they're found guilty of cheating, and may also lose their Australian residency visa. The university has checked more than 200 master projects and found that a significant proportion of fee-paying foreign students had been involved in plagiarism.