The Editor Impersonation Scam: From Solicitation to Source

Back in March, I warned about a generative AI-driven scam that was impersonating multiple editors at major publishing houses, along with the literary agents they “referred” to. The goal: to trick writers into buying editing services, supposedly to fix up their query letter or manuscript. The scammer inhabited all three personas: editor, agent, referral editor. Between then and now, this scam, which I’m calling the Editor Scam, has become the single most-reported fraud to Writer Beware. I get two or three reports of it every day–hundreds of reports in total (and Writer Beware typically hears from only a fraction of affected writers). My Impersonation List has more than doubled in size. The scammers seem to be burning through the staff rosters of every agency and publisher they can find; names are used for a few weeks and then abandoned for others (so I rarely see a repeat). Scams keep going because they work: and this one shows no sign of slowing down. Given how extremely prevalent and…

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