Greg Lewis

Writers beware. There are criminals out there who want to bring an unwelcome twist to your tale.

I know because I was caught out by an elaborately constructed scam which I failed to pick up on until a late stage.

I know that many of you are already receiving scam emails.

‘We can land guest spots on thousands of podcasts…’ 

‘We’d love to review your book and share it with our community via our promotion strategies.’

Crooked hands grasping for money in vaguely signatured emails from faceless grifters.

Scammers are even using the names of real editors to contact authors in a way that just doesn’t exist in real life. One popped into my email when I was writing this, but the email address is slightly different to the one used by the genuine publisher.

But the scam that got me was slightly different and that’s why I’m writing this: it was a scam that was hard to read at the beginning.

In fact, I could only be sure it was a trick once I’d done three weeks work and put in my bill.

Looking back, it may have been one of those situations where things appeared to be good to be true.

But I’m freelance. I don’t always have lots of work. And often when I write, it’s for a small advance that’s not going to keep me in avocadoes and cinema tickets. So, any work I can get alongside that is good.

And the scammers contacted me via a very trustworthy online database from which I’ve been commissioned for writing work in the past.

It seemed like a dream job: write five scripts for short films to be published on the internet.

I’d just written a whole pile of scripts for BBC Bitesize so the request seemed to slot in perfectly after that.

I was offered a decent wage to write 10,000 words – and I received a proper contract.

And the contract was one of the reasons I ceased to be suspicious: they offered to pay me in two instalments – with half coming when two scripts had been delivered.

If I was going to get paid like that, where was the scam?

I also received a detailed brief about the subject and how they wished the story to be broken down.

The films would be about an inventor who’d played a part in the civil rights movement in the United States. Somebody who was real, had a proper story, and had been underrepresented in books.

This was a joy to research and to begin working on.

After just over two weeks, I sent off the first two scripts and a note came back saying that they were great and only needed a bit of tweaking on their end.

So I was delighted to get on with the third script and send in my invoice for the first two – half the total of the commission.

The client then sent me a copy of a receipt showing that the money had been transferred from their bank.

It was then I noticed this appeared to be a Cayman Islands-based bank and, when I Googled it, it had very little internet footprint, other than a website.

The niggling concerns at the back of my brain came to the front.

Then I received an e-mail from the client’s bank stating that there was an issue with passing the money on to me but that it would be resolved shortly.

The day after, I received another ‘bank’ e-mail with the subject heading ‘Incoming transfer notification – pending final settlement’.

The e-mail stated, ‘We wish to inform you that an incoming transfer issued in your favour has been successfully initiated by the originating institution and acknowledged within the interbank processing network. The transaction is currently progressing through the final stages of settlement prior to being credited to your account and requires a refundable deposit of 158 EUR.’

Jaw drop. I knew now I was very definitely in the realm of the classic internet scam, as old as the Nigerian lottery.

Experts have names for these kinds of con: an authorised push payment (APP), a bank transfer scam, or an advance fee scam.

According to the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service, these cons feature a scammer trying to persuade you to transfer your money into another account. For example, to pay a fake invoice.

This was what was happening to me.

I was fortunate that I didn’t lose any money.

But I did waste time writing something that will probably now never see the light of day – and it took me away from a project I was already working on.

And perhaps worst of all, like all victims of scams, it made me feel a bit of a fool.

I can’t believe that I fell for it.

I don’t know where these people were, and I don’t know how many other people they’ve tried to scam, but I imagine it could be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

It’s very hard for us to imagine somebody who wakes up in the morning and goes to work to gain trust, trick, and steal from someone.

But I don’t want to hang on to this memory.

I’m going to go back to writing to try and forget them.

I’m thankful all I lost was a little bit of dignity.