Nice try, scammer scum

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

A few days ago, I received a very legitimate-looking and sounding email. The “agent” who sent it said all the right things, more or less, and appealed to the part of me (and probably most other authors) that is hoping to be “discovered” and have my book or books adapted to the big screen.

Even though it hit all the right nerves, I immediately expected that it was from a scammer because there was just something not “quite” right about it. I’m pretty sure it was written using AI — it was almost “too” perfectly written, if you know what I mean.

But . . . I still hoped I was wrong.

I did not immediately reply to the email as the scammer probably expected me to do if he/she had any hopes of seeing the scam through. There was a knee-jerk sense of pride that someone wanted to adapt my new novel for a movie that almost made me hit “reply,” but I quashed that feeling right away because my Spidey senses told me something was “off” about the email.

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What’s the first thing I did? Naturally, I googled the so-called agent, Vanessa Kirby, who had emailed me. Her signature indicated that she had a talent and literary agency in Los Angeles, and it was the Vanessa K Talent and Literary Agency.

No such agency exists. No such talent or literary agent exists.

In fact, if you look up Vanessa Kirby, you get all sorts of information about the British actress Vanessa Kirby who starred in “The Crown” as the young Princess Margaret. I gave the scammer the benefit of the doubt for a few minutes, thinking that IF she was a real person who happened to have the same name as a celebrity, I’d need to dig a little deeper to find her.

But, no. She doesn’t exist. Her “agency” doesn’t exist. I searched a lot and in various ways.

Then I searched with a question asking if her agency were legitimate. It was the last-ditch attempt/hope to see if this person was real. I immediately hit upon a variety of posts about scammers under the Writer Beware blog.

In there, I learned that many of these scammers who claim to be agents target self-published authors like me, and they are operating from the Philippines.

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That peaked my interest because earlier that same day, I’d seen on my author website’s dashboard under my stats (which I check every day) that someone from the Philippines had visited my website. I get visits from people from other countries fairly regularly, so I hadn’t assumed that something shady was afoot when I’d seen that someone had visited my site from the Philippines. However, once I read this blog post on Writer Beware warning that fake literary agents apparently abound in the Philippines, I knew my scam email had come from there.

The red flags that had sent me in search of the validity of the Vanessa K agency were mentioned in the blog posts, too: the email came to me cold or unsolicited, and it offered the possibility of a movie deal yet the verbiage was cloaked just enough to indicate that there would be a cost to me if I had pursued this.

Photo by أخٌ‌في‌الله on Unsplash

The biggest red flag to me, though, was that “she” had asked me to provide my phone number for ease of communication. Now, that wouldn’t be suspicious if we’d already established a working relationship or if this had been an agent I’d submitted material to who now wanted to represent me, but if she’d been a real agent who wanted to open the door for communication, she would have given me HER phone number and said I could call her if I preferred to communicate that way.

I read some of the comments on the blog post. Many were from people who had fallen for similar scams, provided phone numbers, and then been barraged with hundreds of calls per day until they finally had to change their phone numbers. HUNDREDS of calls.

I deleted the email. I should have taken a screenshot to share here and with other self-published authors to help ensure that they don’t fall for similar scams, but I wanted it gone. I felt sullied simply having it in my email, so I deleted it forever.

I also updated my website and removed my email address from it, which is unfortunate because I do want legitimate readers and literary people to be able to contact me via my website — there is still a contact form they can fill out, but many people prefer to just reach out via email.

It’s sad that there are scammers in this world — far too many of them. They are filth.

For about a day after this, though, I was very despondent.

Whoever this person is, this vile human being, he/she tried to hurt me. Plain and simple. This stranger deliberately tried to cause me harm.

The scammer tried to get to me through the thing I am most passionate about — my writings — by preying upon my hopes and dreams. Yes, I’d love to see one or more of my books become movies, and if I weren’t fairly savvy about online scammers and about the red flags that I need to watch out for, I very easily could have fallen for this scam — at least up to a certain point.

I read of some people who did and who gave money (which I would never have done), believing they were going to reap great benefits from some initial layout of money, only to then see that the scammers demanded more and more until finally disappearing without doing anything they’d promised — or worse, gaining access to financial accounts and draining them.

The online presence I need as a self-published author is a double-edged sword. Most of the time, it helps me because interested readers can learn all about my books, librarians can learn about me to create flyers for my appearances, and I can see the ever-expanding reach I’m gaining as a writer when people from other countries visit my site.

But it makes me vulnerable, too.

The next time I see that someone from the Philippines has visited it, though, I’ll be on the lookout for a scam email and delete it without even reading it.

And if a scam artist is reading this, you can go fuck yourself.

Until next time. For my paying subscribers, I’m including the final version of the humor poem that I submitted to a contest today as well as the next chapter in my recently released novel, “Last in the Class.” Soon, I’ll begin sharing portions of the next novel, too, so please consider upgrading to “paid” status to read what’s beyond the paywall on this post as well as on every archived post in “Tomes and Topics.” It’s just a few dollars a month. Thank you.

Tammy Marshall