Q – 

Hello Angela,

I hope you can help me determine whether I have been scammed by a book promo company called Beacon Chapter Circle. The contact person goes by the name Calla Rowan. I had my doubts about her and the company after I found nothing about her or about the company online—no social media, no website, no news, no reviews, but then they sent me their website which looked good and made sense to me. Here is the URL: https://callarowan.github.io/beacon-chapter-circle-calla-rowan.

Looking at it now, I see a lot about the URL that raises suspicion, but I was blind to that at the time. She sent me the name and contact info. of an author, Dobi Daniels, who supposedly has hired her in the past. I saw that Dobi Daniels is doing very well on Amazon with a number of books to her name. The two email responses that the presumed author sent me were well worded and convincing, but it later occurred to me to wonder whether the person who sent the emails is actually who she claimed to be. The email address is dobidanielsromance@gmail.com. Maybe just a made up gmail address? I know the URL would be different if it were from a Dobi Daniels’ website.

I did go ahead and pay a small amount to Beacon Chapter Circle via Paypal, which I now realize I should not have done. Another red flag was when they sent me a “secure payment link” via Payoneer which I have never used before, and it had a different African-sounding name on it, not Calla Rowan, and not Beacon Chapter Circle, which she explained to me was the name of her financial assistant. I demurred and requested a Paypal link instead.

So far, Calla has sent me many emails, roughly one every 2-3 days, has given me info and insights into my book’s Goodreads and Amazon standings (most of which I was already aware of), and sent me a set of mockups for my book promo, which I haven’t seen used anywhere yet. They also requested a pdf copy of my book to which I said “absolutely not.” I never shared that with anyone other than my two editors and KDP. Fortunately I knew once that’s out of my hands, I could lose control of it.

Just today, I decided to do a Google search again for Calla Rowan and Beacon Chapter Circle and found a Github page which seems to indicate the website was just created on February 27, a day after I inquired whether she has a website. Here is the Github page: https://github.com/callarowan/beacon-chapter-circle-calla-rowan. I still find nothing about the website in a Google search, and I know websites can exist and be viewed by anyone with the URL, without necessarily being published. Even though this seems an open-and-shut scam, I would still appreciate your input. Just typing all this has convinced me to not send her/them anything further.

Thank you.
Marina

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A – 

Good for you for doing your homework! I found other people complaining about Beacon Chapter Circle and Calla Rowan online as well!

1. Calla Rowan is clearly a fake name. I found her picture on her (really crappy) website, and it’s a stock image that appears on NUMEROUS websites. That is FRAUD.

This is from her website (which doesn’t even have its own domain). By the way, that’s also a sure sign that it’s a scammer, and not a real company. Github.io is a free service. REAL companies (especially real publishers and book promotion professionals) have their own domains.

Doing a reverse Google image search, I found these (and a lot more!!!):

2. Dobi Daniels is a real romance author, but that person does NOT use gmail. She has her own domain (unlike the scammer in the picture above). The scammer impersonated the real author. Scammers do that a lot! See: “Celebrity Author” Impersonators Are Fooling Unwary (Real!) Authors

3. “…which she explained to me as the name of her financial assistant.”

Ha ha ha! Fake celebrity romance scammers use the same excuse. There’s always a manager, a financial assistant, or somebody else (under a different name) who collects the money.

See: A FAKE “Celebrity” Tried to Romance Scam Me But He Messed with the Wrong Chick!

4. I am so glad you didn’t send her copies of your book files.

You never, ever want scammers to have your intellectual property!

In reality, “she” is probably not a chick at all. It’s some dude in Nigeria or the Philippines who’s sitting in a big warehouse, surrounded by other scammers.

UPDATE: Since M.K. paid the spammer for a “service” through Paypal (not the friends and family method), her chances of getting a refund are MUCH higher. Had she used Payoneer, Zelle (or another platform popular with foreign scammers), or had she paid using a bank transfer, she would have likely not had any chance of getting her money back. The safest method, however, is via credit card!

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