Plagiarist!!
Another One's Attacked!!
**EDIT** THE USER AND HIS STORIES HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM VOCAL
It has come to my attention that we have another serial plagiarist. Michelle first reported it in our plagiarism group chat on Facebook Messenger this morning when she noticed one of her stories had been stolen by this user. We immediately went into action.
We combed through his stories and found over 20 stories that this user has plagiarized from other users. Plus, he also has many, ever so many, undeclared AI-generated stories. I'll spend the next day or so reporting on him, but I wanted to do a write-up and warn everyone to look for their work among his list of stories first.
The user who stole stories from over 20 different creators is Imran Badshah. You can find him on Vocal at the link below.
Below, I will list the stories I know to be stolen. The plagiarized stories were glaringly obvious to me as soon as I saw them. I will label which ones are the stolen work and which are the original pieces. Please, check out all his stories, though, and make sure none are any of yours. I may overlook some. This thief is really prolific and unimaginative. He seems to have chosen Top Stories from June and July to copy from.
I know how much this sux, but we have to be vigilant as writers. We may not like it, but it is a fact of life in this digital age. As always, we plagiarism warriors will watch where we can.
I will be going through more of Imran's work tomorrow and reporting all his undeclared AI-generated pieces to Vocal. There were several pieces that I was sure were AI instead of plagiarized. This is not surprising to me; I've found that most of the ones who use undeclared AI have no qualms with the other.
You can find the form at the bottom of Thieves! At it Again! to report any plagiarism you may find on Vocal.
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1.
Stolen:
Original by Michelle:
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2.
Stolen:
Original by Margaret:
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3.
Stolen:
Original posted on Medium by River Joy and Celia:
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4.
Stolen:
The original written by Paul:
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5.
Stolen:
Original by Ian:
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6.
Stolen:
Original written by Iris:
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7.
Stolen:
Original written by C.R.
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8.
Stolen Once:
Stolen Twice:
Original by Mikey:
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9.
Stolen:
Original written by AJ
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10.
Stolen:
Original written by Rachel:
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11.
Stolen:
Original written by Raif:
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12.
Stolen:
Original written by Cathy:
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13.
Stolen:
Original written by Tom:
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14.
Stolen:
Original written by Lark:
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15.
Stolen:
Published on Medium by Conor:
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16.
Stolen:
Original written by Michael:
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17.
Stolen:
Original written by Caroline:
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18.
Stolen:
Original written by Belle:
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19.
Stolen:
Original written by Rasma:
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20.
Stolen:
Original written by Natasja:
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21.
Stolen:
Original written by Tina:
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22.
Stolen:
Original written by Stephanie:
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23.
Stolen:
Original written by Alexandria:
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24.
Stolen:
Original by Asim:
About the Creator
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Comments (30)
My word, how horrible! I hadn't known until I read your story, so thank you BIG time Mother Combs!
Congrats on such an eloquent construction of a tale so horrid. So much work you put into this. Oh my. 😒🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️Hugs. B well MC
Thanks for this expose Mother! You rock! 🫶🏾🩷💪🏾
Good grief, not again. Wasn't this Imran guy removed from Vocal once before? I'm pretty sure I've seen that profile picture at least one other time. Considering that I've now got 151 stories on my profile, this is frustrating to see.
Not again ! That is a lot of pieces claimed as their own. Thanks for noticing mother combs.
Well done for your stand and thank you for taking the time to do all of this. A deserved top place on the leaderboard and highly relatable as I just posted a poem wondering if AI will be used more by story thieves and they will steal less.
Congrate Next Time Me
This makes me sick when we find someone stealing our work!! Love that this is number one on this week's leaderboard!! It needed to be pointed out!! Great work MC!!
Wow! I'm glad I saw this on the leaderboard. I had to miss it in my notifications. Thank you so much for doing this Mother. It drives me crazy knowing that thieves lurk on this sight. Makes you wonder about sites other than Vocal or medium where they may be posting stolen woke. May all their fingers break at once. Hope vocal is working on a lock feature where only the author can highlight and copy their own work after it's been published. Thank you again, Mother!
Wooohooooo congratulations on your Leaderboard placement! 🎉💖🎊🎉💖🎊
Thank you for this. I’m furious that I’m on the list, but also for everyone else he’s stolen from. He took a particularly personal piece and I’m sure that’s true of others. But I’m so grateful that you put in this hard work. ❤️
Wow, that's insane! I managed to find one about a year ago. It was stolen from one of my editors on Medium. They didn't even bother to reword it, or anything. Thanks for speaking out about this!
Thank you so much for catching this 🙏🏽 I didn't think someone would literally steal my story that has my name in the title lol. Whoever it is, literally has no shame SMH
Motherfucker. Stole my pic, my actual pic too. Shitfucker. I am so pissed, lol! Thank you to you, Judey, and your due diligence. AJ and Judey were the ones who alerted me, and their messages I saw first. Well done for your efforts, again. See, this is exactly what we're talking about in our other chat. Mother Combs, Sharon <3
Judey is the one who told me about my piece being plagiarized. What irked me is that he not only took credit for a ttrpg setting I have spent years on, he also didn't even format my article correctly. *facepalm*
Mother, thank you so much for sharing this. I'm still reeling over what happened. Sleep was very restless last night but knowing you're on top of this gives me comfort. Thank you again.
Thanks for doing this. It must have taken you hours. I tried to follow Judey's lead last night after I got notification from her that my story has been stolen. I found reported, and notified several creators of their stolen work. The whole thing made me so angry, I had to step away after about an hour. I normally would be ecstatic to see my name on a list with these other incredible creators, but this feels like such a violation. How dare he steal my words? How dare he do this to my vocal friends? Thank goodness we have vigilant readers like Michelle, Judey, and you to protect our work from this kind of fraud. I can't think you enough.
Btw: was Em khan also plagiarized the CR piece. As always when reporting for plagiarism I left a note of his post. Today they responded with ‘thanks’. I encourage folks to leave those notes so other know they have been reported
It blows. Every time I see something like this happening, I am reluctant to support anyone without a V+ membership, but even they may not be immune from this impulse of thievery. There's a thing I've noticed when scrolling through this list. Let me digress a little and say, you are eternally amazing for doing this. We love and appreciate you. I just hope their "smarts" stop at this level. If anyone else is reading this besides our wonderful mother combs, I am so sorry that this happened to you. Crazy how Mr singletons one was stolen twice. The last one was surprising. Did he steal a none V+ members, story, for good luck? The rage in me right now is too much. I've booked marked the 'thieves! at it again!' they've even got the lovely Cathy too?! 😤 All in all thank you so much for letting us know, and for guiding us through this 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🤗❤️
Thank you for doing this, Sharon, it must have taken effort and time. Amazing that “the student” didn’t even bother to change anything in the lifted stories. I’m going to report him as well.
Omgggg, this guy is notoriously prolific! I've only reported Michelle's stolen piece. Now I'll go report the others as well. I hate this guy!
You have put a hell of a lot of work into this that you shouldn't have had to. I do remember a time when a Vocal Creator had a story blocked by Vocal because she quoted her own work. So Vocal did used to check for plagiarism, but seem to have dropped that because every plagiarised story generates reads and interaction. But thanks again for doing the work that Vocal should be doing
Damn. Thanks for this exposé!
This is important - good job for recognising it and calling it out! I'll be reporting the well-loved stories he's copied as well :D
That’s so frustrating. Thank you for putting in the time and energy to track this down and warn everyone.