Something I didn't say before, but probably should have, is that I completely understand and agree with the sentiment about young writers copying things as part of the learning process - I did that writing, drawing, composing, modelling, programming, you name it. It's far and away the most effective way to learn how to create things yourself. This is what I was getting at in my earlier post, talking about the difference between a story for your friends to read and one you'll have published, and where I think this girl went wrong; she's only seventeen, but she's studying at Harvard, where you don't do ANYTHING small. You can sneeze on a napkin at Harvard and somebody's going to want to publish it. So probably, if we assume that she WASN'T an intentional fraud trying to scam cash for other people's work, she just got caught in the kind of situation Dave mentioned, where they offered her a book deal and she didn't think twice. Pity.