The Monkey And The Plywood Violin

Posted by Victoria Strauss

https://writerbeware.blog/2026/03/27/watch-out-for-this-scam-impersonating-editors-at-major-publishing-houses/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=watch-out-for-this-scam-impersonating-editors-at-major-publishing-houses

https://writerbeware.blog/?p=15474

I’ve recently gotten a slew of reports of emails purporting to be from editors at Big 5 and other large publishers, in which the supposed editor expresses interest in the writer’s work and asks whether they have a literary agent.

I’ve posted a number of examples below. Apologies for so many images, but I wanted you to see, beyond the gen AI personalization and praise, how similar they are–including the identical phrases I’ve highlighted in red (I’ve redacted the authors’ details, along with information specific to their books).

I’ve seen additional emails–with the same highlighted phrases–using the names of Gabriella Mongelli of Hachette, Sarah Peed of PRH, Jesse Richards of Workman Publishing, Masie Cochran of Tin House, and Megan Tingley of Little, Brown. No doubt there are others. (UPDATE: Adding Daphne Durham and Megan Wenerstrong, both of PRH, to the list.)

As you will probably have gathered, this is a referral scam–actually a double referral scam, as you’ll see below. It appears to be yet another variant of the prolific AI-driven scams from Nigeria.

Referral 1: A Fake Literary Agent

I heard from three writers who responded to the initial solicitation, and exchanged several emails with the supposed editor before the scammer got to the point: recommending “one of our company’s private and reliable literary agents”. (Note: literary agents do not work for publishers. That would be the opposite of their actual function: to advocate on behalf of authors).

• “Rosemary Brosnan” recommended Leslie James, Literary Agent (lesliejames.agent@gmail.com).
• “Alessandra Balzer” recommended Wreth Maine, Literary Agent (wrethmaine@gmail.com).
• “Gabriella Mongelli” recommended James Mustelier, Literary Agent (jamesmustelier.literaryagent@gmail.com).

The first two “agent” names are fictional; a websearch on them turns up nothing. James Mustelier, however, is a real agent with The Bent Agency, whose identity has been appropriated by the scammer. (UPDATE: “Megan Tingley” is referring to Sara Megibow, Literary Agent, at a really extravagantly fake email address: saraquery.megibowlitagent@gmail.com. Like James Mustelier Sara Megibow is a real agent with the Megibow Literary Agency.)

The three authors bowed out at the agent referral stage, and didn’t take the scam any farther. But I like to see where things go, and I’m always up for a challenge…so I contacted Leslie James myself, pretending to have been referred by “Rosemary”. Leslie replied warmly within a few hours (fast responses are a hallmark of this type of scam; they don’t want to waste any time getting your money, which is also why they keep nudging you if you don’t respond right away).

Here is my query (the attached manuscript is a trunk ms. donated by a friend of Writer Beware for use in such situations; it has no similarity to my plot summary).

You’ll notice that I’ve taken no trouble to conceal my identity–using my real name, email address (which I’ve redacted), and signature, which includes two links to Writer Beware. Along with the patently ridiculous query, this is an AI test: if these exchanges were monitored in any meaningful way, the scammer might cut off contact at this point.

At any rate, Leslie did identify a problem with my query–though not that my bloated fantasy novel ripped off the plot of a popular TV show. “After going through the query letter,” she wrote, “I noticed that it does not currently meet the standard format we would typically need for a strong submission to a major publisher such as HarperCollins.” (No kidding). “If you don’t mind, I can connect you with a professional consultant who has experience helping authors refine their query letters and prepare their manuscripts for submission.” Once my query was fixed, Leslie promised, “we can move forward with the submission process”.

This is at least a little clever: the referral to the “professional” isn’t a kissoff, but is framed as an intermediate step toward a reward down the road. It’s a tried and true referral technique, used by, among others, the myriad of fake literary agencies that referred writers to fraudulent editing service Edit Ink.

Referral 2: A Fake Book Doctor

The recommended professional consultant: Allie Oosta, Book Curator Doctor. This too appears to be an impersonation (there’s a LinkedIn for an Allie Oosta who’s an executive with Amazon Fashion); Fake Allie also is associated with the tipped reviewer scam.

I emailed Fake Allie. She responded within the hour, inviting me to send my query, which I did. Here’s her response, which again took less than an hour to get to me. As with Leslie, neither my excessive word count nor my improbable plot summary are a problem.

I could definitely afford it, I responded (so kind of her to ask!). Could she send me information for a bank transfer? (Note: never pay with bank or wire transfer! Unlike credit card charges, such payments can’t be reversed. I ask for this only because I’m collecting information and have no intention of paying.) She promptly provided it.

Once I get scammers to hand over their bank account info, I’m done with them. Being ignored makes them sad, however, and Allie emailed several times over the next few days to ask, plaintively, why I was ignoring her.

I also contacted “agent” Wreth Maine. His or her response was a bit different from Allie’s.

Hmmm. Maybe a human is monitoring things after all?

Spotting the Scam

Judging by the number of reports I’m getting, and the growing number of editor names involved, this is currently a very active scam.

Structurally, it’s similar to the Famous Author scam; an initial friendly solicitation, followed by a referral to a literary agent, who in turn refers to an editor or marketer who charges a fee. The only difference is that the initial contact comes from a scammer impersonating an editor, rather than a well-known author. In this circular process, the same scammer (or the same group of scammers) inhabits every persona, and writers are handed from one to the next, always arriving at a point where they have to pay.

If you see the emails all together, as in the screenshots at the top of this post, it’s obvious that they are using the same template, although personalized to the recipient. One email on its own, however, might seem at least somewhat plausible. But though it’s hard to conclusively say “never” in publishing, it is extremely unlikely that an editor at a major publishing house will contact you out of the blue, let alone invest so many paragraphs in summarizing and praising your work: these are busy people, and in any case, editors expect writers to come to them, not the other way around. Especially nowadays, with scams–in particular impersonation scams–being so prevalent, any emails like the ones above really can be dismissed outright as fraudulent. At the very least, they should be treated with extreme skepticism. And the moment money is mentioned, you should bail.

There’s also the matter of the email addresses. A genuine contact from an editor from Macmillan or Bloomsbury or HarperCollins would come from a company email address, not a Gmail or AOL address or a weird mashup like the fake addresses for Rosemary Brosnan and Alessandra Balzer, in which the recipient is “harpercollins” and the domain is the editor’s name. Those domains actually are registered, by the way; it’s common practice for scammers to register fake domain names in order to be able to email from them. This scammer seems to be fond of Squarespace.

There are even “coming soon” placeholder pages. Again, though, in terms of plausibility: how concidental is it that editor Alessandra Balzer would have registered her personal domain name just three days before contacting you? (The Alessandra Balzer example at the top of this post arrived on March 16.)

Finally, if you’re still in doubt, you can contact the publisher and ask. Most publishers are now extremely aware of the impersonation scam problem; all the majors have fraud alert pages (here’s HarperCollins’s), and are very willing to respond to questions.

And of course, you can contact me.

On payment, a few scam tips (other than the fact that there should never be a fee or purchase requirement associated with traditional publication or literary agent representation):

• As noted above, never pay for a publishing-related service via bank or wire transfer, because such payments can’t be reversed.
• When offering or demanding bank transfer, Nigerian scammers favor Wells Fargo and Lead Bank (I’ve collected dozens of examples).
• Be suspicious if you’re asked to pay via PayPal using the friends and family option. Scammers like this for the same reason they like bank transfer: these payments can’t be disputed.
• When I first started tracking Nigerian scams, many demanded payment to third parties via Upwork or Fiverr profiles. This seems to be less common now, but is still a caution sign.
• I’m seeing more payment requests routed through a platform called Coachli. There’s nothing fraudulent about the platform itself, as far as I know, but it is a platform specifically tailored to Nigerian and African service and content providers, and I’ve documented several Nigerian scams that have used it.
• If a provider invoices you from a payment platform like Payoneer, be extremely suspicious if the invoice lacks important information like a provider name and a description of services, or if the service description doesn’t match the service you want to buy. These are all problems I’ve seen with invoices from scammers.

The post Watch Out For This Scam Impersonating Editors at Major Publishing Houses appeared first on Writer Beware.

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https://writerbeware.blog/?p=15474