As you all know, we have been researching overseas criminal cartels that are targeting U.S. authors (and others) online, primarily using paid advertisements on Facebook.

Attorney James Walsh, University of Tennessee Professor Clayton Jones, an independent researcher (all three are volunteering their time), and I are all working together to put the puzzle pieces together. There are now more than 200 scam websites on our list. When we add one of the companies to our gigantic spreadsheet (being shared on Dropbox), we look up the website, find the address and phone number, Google those, and more scammers pop up! Why? Because many of them are sharing a huge bank of phone numbers and some are sharing addresses. Many of them are using “virtual offices” to make it appear they are in the U.S. Others are using addresses of houses or apartment buildings. For the investigation, we must get screenshots from their websites, their Facebook pages (many of them are also doing the same thing on other social media platforms), Google, ICANN (researching their domain, when the website was created, what company is hosting it, where that company is, etc., etc.). It’s a HUGE JOB!

The most pressing problems for us are:

1. The amount of work involved. It is a HUGE undertaking and we all must do the research in our limited spare time. If you are an excellent researcher, and if you’d like to donate your time to this project, we would love your help!! We think we need approximately three more researchers. However, since I wouldn’t put it past these scammers to try to infiltrate our research files, you must have been a WritersWeekly.com subscriber for at least a year. If you and I have shared correspondence over the years, all the better!

2. These scammers are running TONS of ads on Facebook! James and I have reported several of them but Facebook won’t remove the ads and pages. Why? Because Facebook’s “report fraud” button is WORTHLESS! It simply asks you if it’s fraud, and what type of fraud. Then, you click and that’s all they get. How can you explain how the scammer is defrauding authors when there is no box to type details into?

This is one example of how Facebook refused to remove the PAID ADVERTISEMENTS for one of the scammers:

3. Authors ARE taking the bait! There are countless followers on the scammers’ Facebook accounts, and comments under their posts. Of course, we can only assume that a company with a website only a month old, but with thousands of followers on Facebook, has purchased or arranged for those FAKE followers in order to make themselves look successful.

4. The ONLY way to take them all down is to compile all of our information about each so-called “publisher,” connect the dots (we can sort the spreadsheet by addresses and phone numbers), and present our final findings to YOU (our readers!), Facebook’s legal department, and to the state, federal, and foreign governments. While the addresses for the scammers are all over the map, they all say they’re in the U.S., but they are not.

When I was helping Amazon’s lawyers last month (Amazon is suing some of these scammers for Trademark Infringement), they were successful in getting four of the scammers’ websites shut down in just four hours! Our problem is we are just independent researchers and journalists. Nobody is paying a law firm to do this. And, Attorney James M. Walsh is doing all of his work pro bono.

What I’m asking all of you is to PLEASE spread the word far and wide. Send the link for this article to EVERY author and writer you know, as well as your online and social media writers’ groups.

Not only are the scammers raking in the dough but SO IS FACEBOOK! They have zero financial incentive to research these companies after receiving a report, nor to remove pages and ads posted by these scammers.

These scammers are primarily targeting authors (publishing, cover design, ghostwriting services, etc.) but they are also running ads on Facebook offering:
– Website design services
– Marketing services
– SEO services
– Tutoring services (not kidding!)
– And one even offers textile exports to the U.S.

I suspect, the more we dig, the more “services” we will find.

These foreign scammers want your personal info., your bank info., your credit card number, and your social security number. You would think most people would know better but they clearly don’t! I’m hearing from increasing numbers of victims, intelligent folks were who duped! While this type of scam has played out in different forms many times over the years, these scammers have a LOT of money (meaning their scamming is successful!) and we have found more than 200 (at last count!) websites to lure authors in with “too good to be true” low prices.

I was contacted by an author just last week who hired the FAKE McMillan Publishers, spent a lot of money, and he is, of course, extremely unhappy. Another author contacted me saying she thought she’d hired Simon and Schuster. Nope! These scammers aren’t afraid to commit trademark infringement, either, because, being in India and Pakistan (and elsewhere overseas), they are pretty much untouchable from a legal standpoint.

If you’d like to volunteer your time for this project, please CONTACT ME. We would certainly appreciate the help!! Also, please consider donating to our researchers. Any donations we receive until the investigation is complete (it is expected to take months) will 100% be distributed to our researchers.

You can donate through Paypal.com. Our Paypal ID is: angie@writersweekly.com

NOTE: Your donation is not tax deductible. We are not a non-profit.

RELATED

• EXTREME AUTHOR ALERT – PART I: This International Scam is Fooling THOUSANDS of Authors Across the Globe!
• EXTREME AUTHOR ALERT – PART II: 19 Signs You’re About to Get Scammed By a Foreign “Book Publisher”
• EXTREME AUTHOR ALERT – PART III: How WritersWeekly Communicates Directly with Deceitful “Publishers” to Expose Their Appalling Practices
• EXTREME AUTHOR ALERT – PART IV: WARNINGS about TheGhostWriting.org, Book Publishing HQ, Author Book Creators, Author Books Publisher, AMZ Publishing Firm, and McMillan Book Publishers (the fake one), AND MORE!
• DON’T MISS THIS ONE! Publishing Mojo Claims THEIR REPUTATION WAS HARMED, But Then Stops Responding After MORE Allegations Surface!!