FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
It might sound like the plot of a thriller film or novel, but a writer of books and films about scams became a victim of another scam in which she nearly lost her bank account to a PayPal rep and then she lost her Facebook account and groups to an email replacement scam.
But after a chase to buy nearly $10,000 in gift cards for the PayPal scammer who gained account information for her bank, she foiled the scammer who followed her on her way to the first store by going to her bank, called out “I’m being scammed,” and the bank quickly closed her account. So score one for the victim!
But she couldn’t act quickly enough to save her Facebook account and groups dealing with scams and AI, though she recreated them again as “Cons, Scams, and Frauds” and “The AI Revolution and Writing, Arts, and Business.”
Then in a crazy twist of fate, after her Facebook account lay dormant for 4 months, it suddenly came back to life, probably since it was sold on the black market for social media groups. Within a few days it had a new administrator. who had no idea why he was chosen. Maybe he was supposed to be a cover for the real scammer or whoever bought the group. However, in an incredible twist of fate, the new admin thought Gini, who joined the group with her new Facebook account, was the admin.
After Gini asked how he became the admin and they communicated for awhile privately, he made her another admin for her once stolen group. And now the two have been eliminating scammers pushing recovery and other scams to the group – over 250 so far. You might call it a story about the scammed scamming the scammers — and the story will be in Gini’s seventh book about scams, tentatively called Scamming the Scammers and Other Scam Stories and featuring not only this story, but stories about the black market for Facebook and social media groups, the recovery and refund scams, the latest internet scams, and ways to recognize and defeat the scammers of these new scams.
Gini began writing all of these books about scams after discovering a book-to-film scam as a ghostwriter, a story described in the The Big Con, published by American Leadership Books, which was turned into a recently released film. Conned: A True Story. Both the book and film feature stories of the book-to-film scam victims she unwittingly wrote materials for as a ghostwriter, but the author’ film pitches went nowhere. because the scam featured pitching their material to phony executives at real companies for promised deals that weren’t real. Then, that experience, in which she immediately stopped working for the company on discovering the scam, reported them to law enforcement, and spoke to a dozen victims, led her to explore other scams and warn people about them in I Was Scammed, also published by American Leadership Books. And that book became another recently released film: Con Artists Revealed, featuring the victims of various scams and experts from law enforcement talking about a variety of scams and how to avoid them.
Then, she ended up writing two more books about scams after nearly losing many thousands of dollars in the PayPal rep scam which became Scam Story and losing her Facebook account to an email replacement scam, which became The Great Big Facebook Hack, two more American Leadership Book books. In Scam Story she describes her harrowing experience in which a scammer purporting to help her get a refund for a mistaken charge gained access to her phone and bank account. “I should have known better,” Scott commented, “but I really thought he was a PayPal rep who wanted to help me and convinced me the charge was pending, after I went to the PayPal site and didn’t see the claimed charge. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the number I called was in the email, not in the PayPal site help section, which connected me with the phony rep.” At first he was so persuasive that he needed her account information to process the refund, and then turned threatening once he had that information in order to convince her to go to six stores to buy 6 gift cards at each one for $250 each – a total of $9000 or he could take all the money from her account. But while he followed Gini’s journey on the phone, she went to her bank instead of a store, which foiled the plan by closing her account, and thereafter she ignored any calls from the scammer.
Then in the Facebook scam, she encountered the email replacement scam which is used by hackers to take over Facebook and social media accounts, and if you don’t act quickly enough, your account is gone. After she lost her account and discovered that millions of social media are affect, that led to The Great Big Facebook Hack, which describes what happened and what to do if a scammer tries to take your Facebook or other social media account and groups. And in a few months, the stories of these latest scams will become another book and documentary, Scamming the Scammers.
Gini has a wealth of information on scams, based on her experiences and research, along with guidelines for others on how to avoid getting scammed themselves.
For more information on the books and films, or to set up interviews with Gini Graham Scott,contact:
Karen Andrews
Executive Assistant
Changemakers Productions
San Ramon, CA 94583
(925) 804-6333