Don't Be Scammed by the Latest Scams: I Was Scammed Books

By Gini Graham Scott PhD

I Was Scammed: Don't Be Scammed by the Latest Scams begins with a brief introduction to how the scam investigation began after a scam targeting book authors in The Big Con. Then the book focuses on some of the latest scams, including gift card, couponing, and phone contest scams.  Other scams featured are podcast, conference participation, book review, publishing, and marketing service scams.

Besides describing the scams, the book provides tips on how to avoid becoming a victim, and what to do if you are.

GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, PhD, JD, is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar leader, specializing in business and work relationships, professional and personal development, social trends, popular culture, science, and crime. She has published over 50 books with major publishers. She is the founder of Changemakers Publishing, featuring 150+ books on work, business, psychology, self-help, and social trends. She has worked with dozens of clients on self-help, business books, memoirs, and film scripts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Leadership Books
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201332396

Gini Graham Scott PhD

Gini Graham Scott is a screenplay writer, executive producer, and TV game show developer, plus a nonfiction writer who has published over 200 books, 50 for traditional publishers and 150 for her own company Changemakers Publishing. She also writes, reviews, and ghostwrites scripts and books for clients. She has written scripts for 20 feature films and has written and executive produced 11 film and TV projects. These include Me, My Dog, and I and Rescue Me, distributed by Random Media,  Driver, distributed by Gravitas Ventures, Deadly Infidelity, distributed by Green Apple,  Death’s Door, a TV series based on a co-written book. At Death’s Door, published by Rowman & Littlefield, The New Age of Aging, distributed by Factory Films, and Reversal distributed by Shami Media Group. Several other films have just been completed or are in production: Courage to Continue and Bad Relationships She has recently developed a TV series The Neanderthals Return, based on a series of books about the Neanderthals coming back into modern society. She has written and produced over 60 short films, including dramas, book and film trailers, TV show pilots, documentaries, and promotional videos.  Her IMDB resume is at http://imdb.me/ginigrahamscott. She is the author of four books on filming, including So You Want to Turn Your Book Into a Film?, The Basic Guide to Pitching, Producing, and Distributing Your Film, and The Basic Guide to Doing Your Own Film Distribution, Finding Funds for Your Film or TV Project.  and The Complete Guide to Distributing an Indie Film. She has been hired to write over two dozen scripts for clients, adapted from their novels, memoirs, or script ideas. She reviews books for their film potential and writes treatments and scripts for three major companies that publish books and promote them for authors. Her scripts include action/adventure scripts, suspense thrillers, psychological character films, and contemporary dramas.  Some recent scripts are the sci-fi suspense thrillers Brain Swap, Dead No More, Deadly Deposit, and Reverse Murder.  Other scripts include the crime action thrillers Rich and Dead and Deadly Affair; and the suspense thriller Bankrupt.

Book preview

I WAS SCAMMED BOOKS:

DON’T BE SCAMMED BY

THE LATEST SCAMS

by Gini Graham Scott, PhD

American Leadership Books

with

Changemakers Publishing

2415 San Ramon Valley Blvd.

Suite 4-366

San Ramon, CA 94583

[phone]

I WAS SCAMMED BOOKS: DON’T BE SCAMMED BY THE LATEST SCAMS

Copyright © 2022 by Gini Graham Scott

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

How It All Began

Discovering a World of Scams

The Major Scams and Stories of Victims in this Book

CHAPTER 1: GIFT CARD SCAMS

Some Examples of Scam Victims

How and Why These Scams Work

Major Ploys to Get You to Buy a Card

How to Avoid Becoming a Gift Card Scam Victim

What to Do If You or Someone You Know Becomes a Victim or Doesn’t Fall for a Scam

CHAPTER 2: THE GROWING COUPONING SCAM

Featuring the Scam in the Queenpins Movie

The Real Scam that Inspired the Movie

Still Other Couponing Scams

Recognizing Different Couponing Scams

What’s Legal and What Isn’t

The Various Types of Coupon Scams

The Manufacturers Affected by the Coupon Scams

How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of a Coupon Scam

How to Report Coupon Scams to the Authorities

CHAPTER 3: PHONY CONTEST AND PRIZE SCAMS

An Example of a Contest Scam Victim

How the Contest Scam Works

How to Avoid Being Scammed

CHAPTER 4: PODCAST PARTICIPATION SCAMS

My Experience of a Podcast Scam

Investigating and Recognizing a Podcast Scam

CHAPTER 5: CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION SCAMS

The Bogus or Predatory Conference Scam

How to Recognize Predatory Conferences

CHAPTER 6: PUBLISHING AND MARKETING SERVICES SCAMS

14 Signs of a Marketing or Publishing Scam

An Update on a Book-to-Film Scam

CHAPTER 7: THE BOOK REVIEW SCAM

The Threat of Getting Bad Reviews

Some Book Review Victims

How to Protect Yourself from the Book Review Scammers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS ON SCAMS, CRIME, AND SOCIAL ISSUES BY GINI GRAHAM SCOTT

CONTACT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

Don’t Be Scammed by the Latest Scams is one of a series of books about scams that are part of the I Was Scammed survey of scams and how to avoid them.  It is included in the complete book: I Was Scammed, along with other books in this series. Following is a brief introduction to how I got involved in studying scams which is included in all the books in this series.

How It All Began

I began investigating scams about two years ago when I got caught up in two scams.

In one case, I was working as a ghostwriter writing book to film reviews and the materials authors needed to present to a legitimate TV/film executive or producer to consider turning their book or script into a film, such as scripts, loglines, synopses, and show bibles. However, in speaking to one author, I discovered that one company had created a scam with imposter executives and producers for a real company to get the authors to pay them to write more and more, but the material went nowhere. The scammers created a phony marketing campaign for them, too, and then the scammers disappeared.

A close up of a tombstone Description automatically generated with medium confidence

In the other case, I was the victim due to writing materials for a client I obtained through a ghostwriting service.  But after I had written about half the client’s proposal and he had paid me through the service, he filed a fraudulent chargeback through his bank. Then he stopped communicating and disappeared.  In such cases, the banks normally support their clients, who can readily get away with what’s called a friendly fraud chargeback scam, though there is nothing friendly about it.  The result was that the payment platform this ghostwriting service used initially subjected any further payments to me to a 90-day hold for 35% of the funds. Then, it cancelled my account, restored it for a few months, and cancelled it again, before I finally convinced the platform to restore my account, since this was a fraudulent claim by a client who disappeared.

After those experiences, I began investigating to learn more about those scams, and soon I found many more scams targeting writers, and I discovered over 200 merchants who complained that their accounts were unfairly terminated by this same payment platform due to their friendly fraud chargebacks.

Discovering a World of Scams

As I continued to investigate, the universe of scams exploded like a star in the galaxy.  It seemed like there were a number of a scams in virtually every industry, as devious schemers found different ways to cheat consumers, merchants, producers, service providers, and anyone else connected to that industry. And for the most part, the police, FBI, and other law enforcement agencies would simply take a report should a victim contact them, because the world of scams was too large, with millions of victims losing billions of dollars. And the scammers were very elusive, and often in other states or countries. So for the most part law enforcement would just pay attention if enough victims reported being victimized by a scam, if the media raised awareness about that scam, or an especially powerful person became a victim.

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An especially powerful image of this world of scams appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek’s July 5, 2021 edition.  It illustrated the frauds reported by the Federal Trade Commission’s Sentinel database, which indicated that there were 4.8 million fraud reports in the U.S. alone, an increase of 43% from 2019, representing many billions of dollars lost to fraudsters each year.  What was especially amazing about