{"id":547879,"date":"2026-03-27T05:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T05:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547879\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T05:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T05:46:17","slug":"a-new-ai-scam-targeting-authors-invokes-elena-ferrante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547879\/","title":{"rendered":"A New AI Scam Targeting Authors Invokes Elena Ferrante"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAuthors<\/a> are at their most vulnerable in the weeks leading up to the publication of a book. With little to do but wait for reviews and social media reactions, they vacillate between the manic hope that the fruit of their labor will imminently top the best-seller list and the dread that it will fall between the cracks of the attention economy and disappear into the void, which, after all, is the fate of most books<\/a>. One of my fellow authors ruefully calls this nerve-wracking pre-pub period \u201cthe calm before the calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was in this harrowing lull ahead of the January release of my latest book, a nonfictional nautical tale titled Neptune\u2019s Fortune, that I began receiving the emails. Sent by purported publishing professionals with names ranging from insipidly Anglo Saxon (Dorothy Stratton) to extra-terrestrial (Futa Concept), they all followed a similar template: Four or five smoothly written paragraphs, beginning with detailed, excessively flattering descriptions of my book \u2014 e.g. \u201cNeptune\u2019s Fortune\u00a0is a masterclass in historical adventure and human obsession\u201d (oh, shucks) \u2014 and culminating in an offer to help me increase its visibility. They promised to mount social media campaigns, get me on podcasts, flood Goodreads with positive reviews, or introduce me to online book clubs, the new gateways to viral success these days as traditional media wanes in influence. Not mentioned in that first pitch was the fee they would charge for these services. But follow-up emails would cite estimates ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars \u2014 a small price for glory.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo get this out of the way, this is not one of those stories where the writer admits to having been swindled out of their life savings. I admit I took the flattery at face value the first time I read it, but by the time money was mentioned, it was obvious it was a scam. So obvious that I couldn\u2019t imagine anyone who\u2019s ever been online actually falling for this, let alone enough people to justify the effort it takes to tailor a detailed pitch letter to each individual mark. Given the average writer\u2019s income, I couldn\u2019t imagine the juice to be worth the squeeze. How could this scam possibly be worth it for the scammers? Enter AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These emails instantly gave off the sickly sweet reek of LLM sycophancy, all written with the same bland fluency. Some included links to hastily assembled Potemkin websites featuring AI-generated covers of nonexistent books by nonexistent authors who had supposedly availed themselves of the sender\u2019s company\u2019s services. Artificial intelligence seemed to infuse every aspect of these pitches, down to the sender\u2019s profile photo, typically of a comely young woman at a nondescript office or coffee shop, with occasional nightmarish hallucinations in the background. Whoever was behind this was not paying for the premium image generators.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore long, I was receiving several of these a week. The polished, personalized, idiomatic language seemed genuine enough to evade Gmail\u2019s spam blockers. I thought I had the rare misfortune of landing on a sucker list, but I soon learned that almost all of my peers were suddenly experiencing<\/a> the same deluge<\/a>. Some were receiving thousands<\/a>. The AI productivity boom we\u2019ve been promised may not yet have hit the economy at large<\/a>, but it\u2019s turbocharged this kind of small-bore scam, drowning our inboxes in highly customized slop.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe emails began appearing in inboxes in mid 2025, and fame and success have provided no immunity. Patrick Radden Keefe, the best-selling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, both of which were adapted into hit TV shows, says it\u2019s nonstop. \u201cEvery morning I wake up to two or three of these emails,\u201d he tells me. Dan Brown, whose The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 80 million copies, shared one such missive<\/a> on Facebook: \u201cHey Dan Brown, I just came across [The Da Vinci code [sic], and I\u2019ve got to say it\u2019s rare to see a story that balances heart, message, and craft the way yours does. It\u2019s the kind of book readers don\u2019t just read: they feel it. That\u2019s special.\u201d Now here came the pitch: \u201cBut here\u2019s the thing: too many incredible books like yours disappear in the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe technology<\/a>\u2019s versatility could theoretically allow scammers to target any creative profession. They\u2019ve begun going after musicians<\/a> with a similar flattery-forward approach, but evidently to a far lesser degree than writers.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuthors, with our particular stew of ego and insecurity, have long been prime targets for scammers. A few years ago, before the widespread use of chatbots, an elaborate operation<\/a> based out of the Philippines allegedly bilked some 800 mostly self-published authors out of a total of $44 million, promising to turn their books into movies and charging exorbitant fees for services that never materialized. But those were more sophisticated stings. The advent of free generative AI has allowed for a shift in scam strategy, from targeted sniper attacks to a hail of machine gun fire. It has brought the cost of bullets \u2014 in this case, the time and effort it takes to find a mark, research their work, draft an email and keep a conversation going \u2014 down to essentially zero. Even if the vast majority miss their target, a single hit keeps the con going. A numbers game is easy to win when the numbers are limitless.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to say how many authors are being taken in, since victims can be embarrassed to admit they were duped. \u201cI have been badly scammed by somebody named Moses Fred,\u201d confessed one commenter<\/a> on Writers Beware, a site devoted to exposing such swindles. \u201cNo website, no LinkedIn page, no following. I was a total fool. He kept emailing me and telling me he could do wonderful things with my book and I fell for it and I feel like a fool \u2013 a fool!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVictoria Strauss, the founder of Writers Beware, told me she has personally spoken to fewer than 20 authors who have paid the scammers. Even if that represents just a fraction of the people who\u2019ve fallen for the ploy, I would have expected more, given the onslaught of daily emails sent to tens of thousands<\/a> of professional authors in America, to say nothing of the self-published ones and those abroad. But thanks to the speed and facility with which AI allows emails to be drafted, it might well be enough. It\u2019s likely paying off, or else the emails would have slowed rather than increased.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe evangelists of generative AI told us it would unleash imaginations. \u201cI believe AI has the potential to democratize creativity on an unprecedented scale,\u201d argued<\/a> Mira Murati, OpenAI\u2019s former chief technical officer. The technology, we were told, would yield a limitless artistic bounty by removing the barriers to entry for anyone lacking in opportunity (or talent). We\u2019re still waiting for that future, but in the meantime, it\u2019s certainly removed barriers for scammers.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are no new scams<\/a>, honestly. Only new versions of old scams,\u201d says Edward Balleisen, professor of history at Duke and the author of Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff. The AI literary scam, he says, is merely a contemporary variant of an old con often called the \u201cSpanish Prisoner\u201d or, more generally, the \u201cadvanced fee scam,\u201d in which the fraudsters dangle a large reward in exchange for a small upfront payment. Once the payment is made, the scammers either disappear or ask for just a little more. \u201cThe basic nature of the scam is there\u2019s a bait and switch,\u201d Balleisen says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the nature of LLMs not to invent anything new but merely remix \u2014 and cheapen \u2014 what exists. What they\u2019ve done is amplify the scammers\u2019 reach. Says Balleisen, \u201cAI is permitting people who would not have had this sort of familiarity with the [publishing] market or with the lingo to be able to pass themselves off as somebody who could offer those services.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs susceptible to flattery as professional authors can be, they\u2019re also hard to fool, since they earn a living from manipulating words. \u201cThey\u2019re always talking about my books in this sort of pseudo-knowledgeable way,\u201d says Keefe of the scammers, \u201cand they all just regurgitate the same language. And it\u2019s sort of fascinating, right? Because, if you\u2019re in the business of actually stringing together original thoughts, you realize what they\u2019re doing is averaging things. I think most [of us] are pretty quick to see through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor authors, the insult of being targeted by an AI scam adds to the injury of knowing that the AI attempting to steal from them has already stolen from them, since it was trained without permission on their collected works. As the technology muscles in on everyone\u2019s turf, it\u2019s led to a flurry of lawsuits and surge<\/a> of public<\/a> opposition<\/a>. Authors were among the first on the barricades, alongside Hollywood screenwriters who made resistance to AI central to their 2023 strike. (Disclosure: I was the lead plaintiff in a class action against OpenAI and Microsoft<\/a>, the first such lawsuit by nonfiction authors to go after generative AI for copyright infringement. The suit is ongoing at the Southern District of New York, and though I\u2019ve since yielded my place among the plaintiffs to more prominent colleagues, my objection to having copyrighted work used without consent or compensation remains steadfast.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter getting enough of these emails, I decided to answer a few to get a better sense of how they worked and who was behind them. I picked one at random: Nilda Mulan, whose AI-generated profile photo bore a passing resemblance to, yes, Mulan, if she wore pantsuits. She had told me that Neptune\u2019s Fortune was \u201ca truly captivating work,\u201d and that she wanted to feature it in The European Book Club, which would introduce it to \u201cour growing global community.\u201d Naturally, this wouldn\u2019t be free: \u201cTo support the quality, coordination, and promotion of each feature, participation includes a\u00a0modest participation fee, which covers editorial preparation, audience outreach, and dedicated promotional efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI told her that I was interested, but that, given the number of scams out there, I would need to verify that she was who she said she was. If she could show me a picture of herself holding my book, which she claimed to love, or even a newspaper with today\u2019s date, I\u2019d consider doing business with her. I felt conflicted about toying with her, knowing that the people engaging in this kind of scam are often themselves victims of human trafficking<\/a> and have little choice in the matter. But I felt that the only way to peek behind the AI was to start a conversation.<\/p>\n

\n\tNilda\u2019s five-paragraph response, which hit my inbox less two minutes later, deftly deflected my request as only AI could: \u201cThank you for your candid message. I completely understand your caution, and I appreciate your desire to verify legitimacy before moving forward,\u201d she wrote, before informing me that sharing photos was \u201cagainst our internal policies.\u201d We went back and forth like this for a while. Nilda\u2019s responses remained unctuously flattering and polite, but never gave in. It felt like speaking with a chatbot instructed to rebuff me, because that\u2019s effectively what it was.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn lieu of the photo I\u2019d asked for, Nilda sent me a link to The European Book Club\u2019s website<\/a>, to assure me that it was a legitimate entity. Among its list of recently featured books were several literary classics with misspelled or otherwise mangled covers that bore all the hallmarks of cheap, over-the-counter AI. What, you\u2019ve never read Murakami\u2019s Norrvgigian Wood or Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2019s Ona Hun dr Da de Solitude?<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving hit a wall, I stopped responding. Five minutes later, eager to keep me on the hook, Nilda apparently made an exception to her internal policies and sent me the below image of her avidly reading my book, coincidentally wearing the exact same outfit and sitting in the same chair as in her profile photo.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I asked what was up with the garbled text on the book\u2019s spine and back cover, Nilda, or more likely her LLM of choice, told me it was \u201csimply due to the image quality and compression, which can distort small details like spine and back cover text in photos.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI didn\u2019t know what I was hoping to achieve, exactly. To embarrass the scammer into admitting their wrongdoing? As long as they were hiding behind their chatbots, this game could go on forever. To make any progress in my investigation, I\u2019d have to speak to someone face to face, or as close as I could get.<\/p>\n

\n\tI picked out another sender, \u201cNicole Powell,\u201d whose profile photo showed her to be a young, perfectly lit white woman smiling impishly behind her laptop. She had offered to help me promote my book on podcasts and in newsletters, among other outlets. I told her that my publisher, Crown, was helping me with all those things, but that I would be interested in speaking with her over Zoom to discuss other opportunities.<\/p>\n

\n\tNicole agreed, to my surprise, but said her assistant, Penny, would attend the meeting in her stead. When I insisted on speaking with Nicole \u2014 meaning the woman in Nicole Powell\u2019s photo \u2014 if only for two minutes, she responded, \u201cI completely understand, and I appreciate your preference. Due to my current schedule, I will not be available for calls until further notice, so my assistant is the one who can attend at this time. She is fully briefed and able to address any questions you have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so I joined a Zoom with Penny. The woman in front of me, who was almost certainly the person passing herself off as Nicole, looked to be in her early 20s. She was shabbily dressed and appeared to be missing one of her bottom teeth. The wall behind her was filthy and I could hear voices yammering loudly in the background. Penny wouldn\u2019t make eye contact as she spoke, with far less fluidity than her AI, about helping me establish an \u201corganic promotion plan\u201d for social media.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a sad spectacle. I reminded myself that many cyber-scammers are effectively enslaved. In developing countries around the world, trafficking rings lure desperate job seekers \u2014 including children \u2014 overseas with fake listings, confiscate their travel documents and force them into fraud operations targeting people in richer countries. The recruits are given unattainable sales quotas to meet, often on penalty of physical torture, quotas that AI has presumably driven higher by allowing scammers to cast a wider net. I had no way to know if this was Penny\u2019s case. I wouldn\u2019t have gotten an honest answer if I\u2019d asked her. But based on the apparent helplessness of the person in front of me, it seemed more than plausible. (Penny is not the name she gave me, which may or may not have been her real name; I\u2019m giving her a pseudonym anyway to protect her from potential punishment.)<\/p>\n

\n\tShe told me Nicole was busy for the foreseeable future, but that I could speak with her instead. \u201cYou can tell me the things you want.\u201d When I told her that sounded a bit scammy, she said, \u201cIf we are a scam, I won\u2019t be able to get on a video call with you.\u201d OK, then.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Nicole had assured me Penny was fully briefed on my book (which she\u2019d called \u201ca gripping blend of historical investigation, maritime adventure, and imperial history\u201d) Penny seemed to know nothing about it, or me.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was something raw about seeing the human being behind the scam without her AI interpreter. However duplicitous, she seemed completely at a loss, naked. I couldn\u2019t imagine this poor girl convincing anyone that she might know the secrets to literary success in America. I wondered who was more credulous: the people who fell for this stuff, or Penny, for thinking she could fool anyone without the help of AI. Just as overreliance on ChatGPT for homework is leading to a loss of literacy among high school students, swindlers are growing so dependent on LLMs they\u2019re incapable of swindling without them.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile she spoke, I googled her full first name and surname, as displayed on her Zoom tile. Both are of Yoruba origin and are common in Nigeria. I asked where her company was based. After a short hesitation, she said South Africa. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps she knew that the notorious Nigerian Prince scam had given the country a bad name, even if it didn\u2019t actually originate in Nigeria.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThis one, apparently, did. Strauss, the founder of Writers Beware, says most of the scammers request payment on platforms like Paypal, Upwork and Fiverr, as well as Coachly, which is popular among West African freelancers. Following a complex trail of IP addresses and geolocated Twitter posts by the scammers, Strauss claims to have traced the operation primarily to Nigeria. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019ve become unbelievably numerous and prolific,\u201d Strauss says of the emails. Yet she believes the Nigerian ring itself to be relatively small. \u201cAI makes this volume possible,\u201d she says. \u201cThe generative AI platforms are making it possible to write endless exchanges.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scams are targeting the book business at an uncertain time for the industry, when self-publishing, rebranded as \u201cindie publishing,\u201d is on the rise, and traditional marketing methods \u2014 newspaper reviews, book tours, radio appearances \u2014 are proving ever less effective. A book\u2019s success is increasingly dependent on the unpredictable force of online virality, an intimidating prospect for many authors who don\u2019t have vast social media followings, aren\u2019t sure how it all works and would rather not have to deal with it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBookTok, especially for a lot of new authors who aren\u2019t super invested in social media, it\u2019s kind of a mysterious place,\u201d says Christie Hinrichs of Authors Unbound, an advocacy and events agency for authors. \u201cLike, how do you even find an entry point in TikTok? How do you go viral? These questions could definitely be a point of insecurity that [the scammers] are taking advantage of.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHinrichs has another theory for why the scam is so prevalent and presumably effective to some degree: authors feel like publishers aren\u2019t holding up their end of the bargain. \u201cI don\u2019t know how people in Africa would know this on an industry level, but post-COVID we have seen publisher support around new titles withdraw a little bit, and some authors might feel underserved, in which case I could see scammers capitalizing on that fear or misgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMost publishers have pages on their websites warning against scams impersonating their staff or otherwise targeting authors. But they struggle to keep up with the pace, as new variations on the scam emerge every day. \u201cIt\u2019s a whack-a-mole situation,\u201d says the general counsel for a major publishing house who requested anonymity. \u201cI email my contact at the FBI to ask what we\u2019re supposed to do about this. But they just refer me to the IC3.gov website,\u201d referring to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Ultimately, the AI lit scam is just one drop in the ocean of scams perpetrated by criminal rings across the planet, a problem too intractable and widespread for any one country\u2019s authorities to solve.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll effective scams are built on desire. So, too, is the book industry. For Elyse Graham, a best-selling historian who shared her frustrations about the AI scam with me, the desire that authors of all levels share \u2014 for success, recognition, prestige \u2014 is up there with the other major sources of yearning that scammers take advantage of: \u201cIt\u2019s love, it\u2019s get-rich-quick, and it\u2019s book publishing: Those are the three things where the engine of longing is so great that it can power an entire scam infrastructure,\u201d Graham says, semi-jokingly. (Hollywood dreams, it could be argued, are just as powerful an engine, as evidenced by the self-published authors who fell prey to the Filipino scammers dangling Netflix deals.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe hunger of authors \u201cis something like the hunger that gets a 90-year-old to believe that they\u2019re in a relationship with Keanu Reeves<\/a>,\u201d Graham says, in reference to a widespread AI-enabled celebrity-impersonation scam originating from Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lit scammers are also impersonating celebrities, albeit of the bookish kind. Some of their emails purport to be fan letters from superstar authors like Margaret Atwood and Rick Riordan. These titans don\u2019t make a pitch directly. The goal is to hook the recipient into a conversation, in the course of which \u201cRiordan\u201d or \u201cAtwood\u201d or \u201cStephen King\u201d will presumably let the desperate author in on the secret organic promotion plans that have enabled them to conquer the best-seller list.<\/p>\n

\n\tLiterary celebrities are invoked in other ways, too. When I asked one scammer (\u201cBecky Janice\u201d) to connect me with authors she had worked with, she provided me with contact information for three writers, including none other than Elena Ferrante, the pseudonymous Italian author behind the so-called Neapolitan novels, the global phenomenon that was adapted into the HBO series My Brilliant Friend. (I can reveal here, exclusively, that her email is apparently authorelenaferrante@gmail.com<\/a>.) Ferrante\u2019s name, it turns out, is frequently cited in these emails, perhaps because the scammers know that Ferrante\u2019s true identity remains elusive.<\/p>\n

\n\tLess prominent authors have also been impersonated. After I\u2019d been given a false email address for Adam Makos, the best-selling military historian, I contacted the real Makos to let him know his identity was being stolen. He was already well aware of the scams and how often they were using his name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I realized it was widespread,\u201d he says, \u201cmy concern was, what if someone actually believes this? This could be crushing to a new author\u2019s morale. It\u2019s easy to laugh off the Nigerian scams at this point. But it\u2019s different when you start playing with someone\u2019s emotions \u2014 not just their bank account \u2014 their emotions, their outlook on humanity. Their belief in the future and their belief in their own potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMakos had alerted his local sheriff\u2019s office, to no avail. He is now planning to contact the FBI but fears any attempt to rein in scammers on the other side of the world is bound to fail. A better solution, he thinks, would be to regulate the U.S.-based AI companies these operations depend on, but that, too, seems futile given the Trump administration\u2019s laissez-faire attitude toward AI. \u201cUsually you would look to the government, but I feel like our legislators are kicking the can down the road. They\u2019re going to let some other generation worry about this,\u201d he says. \u201cI think what we\u2019re watching right now in real time, is the death of truth, the death of reality. Where are the safeguards?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is a life cycle to scams, says Balleisen, the fraud historian. Once enough people are targeted, press reports start coming out, awareness spreads and people grow wise. Nobody but the least informed, or most gullible, among us would now fall for the Nigerian Prince scam, for example. When the scammers\u2019 hit rate has gone down low enough that it\u2019s no longer worth their while, they move on to another scam. (Of course, by allowing such a vast volume of outreach, AI has greatly lowered the bar for that minimum hit rate.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Balleisen told me this, I felt virtuous about having done my part, by writing this article, to expose the scam, and thankful that the benighted legions of striving authors had someone as AI-savvy as me to protect them from this new threat. My pride didn\u2019t last long. While I was putting the finishing touches on the piece, I received an evite from a friend in L.A. to celebrate his birthday the following weekend. I clicked the link and found an image of him blowing out candles. I entered my phone number and sent my regrets, telling him I wouldn\u2019t be in town. Turns out the image was AI and his birthday wasn\u2019t for months. Ever since then, my email has been flooded with AI evites from \u201cfriends.\u201d There\u2019s a sucker born every minute.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appears in The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s upcoming AI Issue, out in April.<\/p>\n