Guest Post: A Narrow Escape From an Impersonation Scam

In the early days of Writer Beware–back in the pre-digital era–scammers waited for writers to come to them.

Sure, they advertised (Writer’s Digest used to have a Classified section that was full of scam ads; one notorious scam agency placed ads in their local Pennysaver). They had websites. And thanks to often lax oversight, they sometimes wound up in reputable market guides (cough *Literary Market Place* cough). But generally speaking, if you were scammed it was because you approached the scammer, not the other way around. (I don’t mean to suggest that being scammed was the writers’ fault; it was just the way things worked at the time.)

That’s no longer the case. Starting in the mid-twentyteens with the first wave of scams from overseas, direct solicitation became one of scammers’ main victim-recruiting techniques (the other: ads on Facebook). And increasingly, these solicitations involved impersonation–of literary agents, publishers, editors, film production companies, and more–to grab writers’ attention and trick them into parting with large amounts of cash.

I wrote my first post about impersonation scams in early 2020. Today, they’re so common that there’s a whole category devoted to them on this blog. If you write, no matter what your genre is or how you publish, you’ve probably been targeted.

That’s why I’m sure that today’s guest post from author Denise Beck-Clark will resonate with you. Denise details her own recent experience with an impersonation scammer, highlighting how elaborate such frauds have become thanks to scammers’ adoption of generative AI, and the vulnerabilities that make writers susceptible to them. She also points out that the authors the scammers seek to defraud are not the only victims. (You may remember Denise from her post last year about a different, somewhat less complicated impersonation scam.)

A Narrow Escape

by

Denise Beck-Clark

It’s called an “Imposter Scam” and it’s become quite popular these days, according to Victoria Strauss who monitors scams against writers in her excellent website, “Writer Beware.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say I have the occasion several times a week to be taken in by a scam. I want to call it a writer’s scam but that makes it sound like it’s the writer perpetuating the scam while the truth is it’s the writer who is being scammed.

Thanks to self-publishing my most recent novel, I am bombarded with phone calls, emails, and texts from people claiming to be from companies who either want to sell my book to a “traditional” publisher as they call them, or to promote my book.

After I lost a few thousand dollars almost two years ago, I’ve been cautious. But the scams are growing ever more sophisticated, viz., the one that almost just happened to me.

It started a couple of weeks ago with an email from one “Anna Michels” from a company called “BestSolution Publishing.” Interestingly, I rescued it from my Spam folder.

The email was quite literate and at the end of it was a picture of a pretty, young white woman wearing a big hat with address, phone number and email address that all looked perfectly realistic. Except for one thing: to my knowledge most young people these days don’t use AOL as their email provider, but she did.

As did “Eric Simonoff”, the literary agent “Anna” recommended to me. Their names are in quotes because that is the heart of the Imposter scam: people use the names of real people in the publishing industry, trying to get the writer to believe they’re being contacted by people who want nothing more than to help their self-published book become a New York Times bestseller.

Thus, “Anna’s” first email to me was all about how she came upon my novel and how it has great potential, etc. etc. Upon my responding favorably to her email, she gave me the name of the literary agent “Eric Simonoff.” Of course, I Googled him, and after seeing lovely pictures of him and his wife and a long list of writers with whom he’s worked, some of whom I’ve read, I contacted him immediately.

Before I go on, I want to say that at the get-go I told “Anna,” and then “Eric,” that I had been scammed for several thousand dollars and I was not going to fork over any money. For anything.

“Eric’s” ploy was to list all the great things about my book, and then to list the ways it could use improvement. Okay, those lists sounded realistic, too. I want to add here that both of their emails were literate with fine grammar and spelling. I didn’t realize then that thanks to AI you could be totally illiterate and non-English speaking and still put out a perfectly literate document in English.

Anyway, the request for money came in the form of “Eric,” the literary agent, so-called, saying a “professional editor” would be needed to whip my book into such great shape that when he would submit it to “traditional publishers” it would be in excellent standing, competing with the masses of other submitted novels that fall upon publishers’ desks these days. I, all innocence, had said, I thought that editing a book is something a publisher does upon acquiring a manuscript. Yes, that used to be the case, “Eric” said, but these days there’s so much competition that it’s best to have the editing done before the publisher reads it.

These emails went on for about ten days, during which time I was starting to get more suspicious. As it was, I was feeling that I had already told them too much about myself, such as my publishing history and future publishing plans. I believed them, until one day I didn’t.

When you’re suspicious, every little detail of an interaction is potentially revealing, potentially the one that turns something you consider legitimate into the opposite. In this case, what started with the so-called “Anna Michels” also ended with her. She, who was the initial contact, had put me in touch with “Eric Simonoff,” claiming that she would be part of the communication with him, including cc’s on all emails, presumably to make me feel more comfortable with him entering the relationship. Well, from the first email to him, I was the only one cc’ing emails to “Anna.” He never did. As the sense of “it’s too good to be true” started gaining momentum in my mind, I spoke about it to friends, one of whom in response to my saying the emails were so literate, said “That’s AI.”

Plus, there was repetition, of what they said and what I said, including that I wasn’t going to pay for anything. That’s when, after not hearing from “Anna” for a week, I got an email from her, which tried to persuade me to go along with “Eric’s” suggestion of hiring an independent editor to make the book better and more likely to be purchased by a “traditional” publisher. I even responded by providing other ways of doing that that wouldn’t cost anything.

That was the last I heard from them. A couple of times, still believing they were publishing professionals affiliated with the companies shown on Google, I almost wrote to them at those places. But then I reminded myself, Anna Michels and Eric Simonoff were not who I was dealing with.

Scams upon artists, including writers and especially writers who self-publish, have the particular quality of appealing to the heart of someone who is starving for praise and approval of their work. A few years ago, I actually had a woman contact me saying she wanted to buy some of my “artwork” for her husband’s birthday. My “artwork” consists of drawings I’ve done that have appeared on a very small scale, here and there; I was not only shocked when I heard from this woman but hugely flattered. I mean, my drawings really are great, aren’t they? Anyone who would just happen to see them would agree, no? In that case, too, after our negotiations went on for a few days, and the plan to pay and receive the drawings got more and more complicated, I realized something wasn’t kosher and called the whole thing off.

For some reason, the legal world doesn’t have a special category for scams against writers/artists. Like when I tried to recoup from my bank the money I lost two years ago, they didn’t call it fraud, they called it “non-deliverance of paid-for services.”

As the imposter scams happen more and more often, there’s another victim besides the writer, and that is the publisher/editor/agent who is being impostered. There is a real Anna Michel, and a real Eric Simonoff. I wish they would step up and do something about someone using their name and/or identity to rob other people of their money. The more we know, the less likely we are to go for the scam. Also, in the rare cases that the imposters get caught, there should be consequences. Now it’s likely happening with such great frequency because they don’t get caught and there are no consequences.

Easy money, eh? Maybe, but not for me.

Note from Victoria: I’ve gotten a number of reports of solicitations from the scam that contacted Denise, BestSolution Publishing. Its website includes a large roster of fake staffers with stolen or stock photos–including a stolen photo of the real Anna Michels, who is the Senior Editorial Director at Sourcebooks–and whose names don’t necessarily match the gender of their images.

Denise Beck-Clark is the author of Thirty Years Hence, A Novel and Concurrent Sentences: A True Story of Murder, Love and Redemption. She has also written essays on Medium and Substack. Find out more at her website: www.denisebeck-clark.com.

Tags: Solicitation

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