“Book marketer Lauren Foster asked me to wire money to somebody named Abdulkareem?”

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Q –

I was contacted by Lauren Foster who will promote my new book online for $350 to be paid via ACH transfer. She sounds legit, but then wants me to pay Abdulkareem Shiyanbola via Lead Bank, which is suspicious sounding. She presents as Lauren Foster, Book Promotion Specialist for Buchboost based in Mississippi, USA. She refers to him as her ‘financial secretary.’ Is this legit? Thanks for your input. I have not sent them any money yet.

A –

There are so many red flags here!

A HUGE red flag is when someone with an American name:

Gives you a different person’s name on the payee account…especially one you can’t pronounce! This happened to us recently. A “freelance writer” with a (fake) American name gave us a Paypal account for payment that had a completely different name on the account. That was suspicious. Then, we ran the article through an AI detector. We told the “writer” that we don’t publish AI-generated articles, and that we don’t send writers’ money to third parties. He simply replied, “Okay.”
Asks you to wire money. All legitimate companies accept credit cards. We also recommend NEVER using third-party services like Zelle (read THIS ARTICLE). Using Paypal carries a lower risk, but NEVER use the friends and family method (many scammers require that) because, under Paypal’s guidelines, you’ll never get your money back when doing that. However, if you file a complaint with Paypal later, if the scammer has already moved the money out of their Paypal account, you may still not be able to get a refund from Paypal. Again, we STRONGLY recommend only using a credit card to give you the best possible chance of getting your money back. Just be sure you issue the chargeback within the first 60 days. Some scammers will drag out the process so, if you do issue a chargeback, you won’t get your money back because, under the credit card companies’ guidelines, too much time has passed.

You wrote, “She presents as Lauren Foster, Book Promotion Specialist for Buchboost based in Mississippi, USA.” That’s another red flag. Legitimate companies in the U.S., who are marketing to U.S. citizens, don’t put U.S. or USA in their communications after the name of the state. Foreign scammers do that because they don’t know any better.

Also, we’ve never heard of a “financial secretary.”

I recommend reporting them to Lead Bank. You can to that here: https://www.lead.bank/fraud-protection

We also could not find a working website for Buchboost.com. We did find https://buchboost.netlify.app, but that is also a non-working website. Notice their company name is piggybacking on netlify.app. That is a free web hosting service. Never do business with a company that doesn’t have their own domain name. (And, beware that many of the foreign scammers DO have their own domain names now.)

According to Google: “Netlify itself is a legitimate, widely used web hosting platform for developers, but its domain (netlify.app) is frequently abused by scammers to host malicious links, such as phishing sites and fake login pages.”

Readers: CONTACT ANGELA if you think you might be talking to a scammer. She answers emails as quickly as she can. If she can’t get back to you immediately, DO NOT SEND PAYMENT to anyone until you hear from her. Many scammers use “sense of urgency” marketing tactics (i.e. “Sign up today and get 50% off!”) DON’T FALL FOR IT!!

For book promotion, we recommend Professor Clayton Jones. He’s in the USA (we have met him in person many times), and is located in Chattanooga, TN. See: Book Publicists We Recommend

Professor Jones’ prices are very affordable, and BookLocker authors rave about his services.

Always remember that spammers are scammers. Never respond to unsolicited emails, and never answer phone calls from unknown numbers. If they leave you a voicemail, and if it’s a marketer or someone offering to publish your book (or ghostwrite, edit, illustrate, etc.), it’s a scammer. Block the number.

Also, do not respond to so-called “marketers” who are contacting you through your website, or contacting you through private messaging, or responding to your posts/comments on social media. You need to assume ALL unsolicited contacts are foreign scammers now. Because, right now, 99.9% of them are.

CONTACT ANGELA if you need specific services. She will refer you to professionals she knows who are NOT located in Pakistan, Nigeria, the Philippines, China, and other scammer hotbed countries.

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