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…