The Lagos operation
THERE are hundreds of books about self-publishing, but so far I haven't seen any of them touch on the one aspect of the business which seems completely inescapable: The daily deluge of scam attempts.
Sometimes I feel as if my website operates entirely as a magnet for shady characters to try and extract money from me via increasingly ludicrous and inept means.
I open my inbox each morning with the kind of tentative, one-eye-closed gingerness with which one might approach an untended rat trap. What will it be today? Another fake book group with 'thousands of engaged members' keen to read and discuss my work, if only I can help them with an initially small but rapidly increasing contribution towards their running costs? A 'marketing expert' with zero online presence and a ludicrous name, earnestly pledging to bring my book to the attention of thousands upon thousands of eager readers?
Or will it be the perennial Facebook favourite – the message from a hijacked dormant FB account, in which, from behind a profile picture of a jolly uncle at a wedding reception or a shirtless young chap on some sandy shore, the scammers soberly inform me that my account has been flagged for some shocking infringement (copyright violation, impersonating another business, eating too much cheese after 9pm etc etc) which can only be remedied by clicking on the virus-infected attachment at the bottom of their email?
This week brought my first exposure to another common type of scam – the Hollywood producer so desperate to turn my work into a film/TV production that he's personally contacted me from his very own Gmail account, rather than the more traditional route of making official contact via agents, lawyers or, God forbid, a verifiable business email address, all of which is only slightly more credible than the notion of a Hollywood producer taking any interest at all in an obscure self-published author in Scotland.
'I recently came across End of a Century,' wrote 'Sam' (not his real name), 'and the detail that immediately caught my attention was the discovery of a 30-year-old love letter hidden inside a vintage 1960s suit.'
There then came, as is traditional in these situations, a lengthy AI-generated summary of my own book, as if Sam thought I might have forgotten the plot of 'End of a Century' by now and, at my advanced age, needed a little prod in the right direction, followed by the baffling closing query: 'If Des and Poppy’s story were brought to the screen, what would you most want to preserve – the mystery surrounding the letter, the romance between them, or the unmistakable feeling of being young and in love in 1990s Britain?'
'Well, to be honest, Sam, I was kind of hoping any attempt to bring the story to the screen would include all three, since they're what the book's about,' is what I might have said, if I was of a mind to reply to 'Sam', but I wasn't.
Instead, I checked my website's traffic analytics to confirm that, around the time the message from 'Sam' had arrived, my website had been graced by yet another of my regular visitors from Nigeria. That beautiful west African country is a hot spot for this kind of scam (as detailed here), and Lagos seems to be a particularly popular base for their perpetrators, if my website analytics are anything to go by.
Usually, scam emails go straight in the bin, but something made me want to toy with 'Sam' a little bit first. He was using the name of a real producer – was he actually going to pretend to be the real Sam?
'Hi Sam. Why don't you send me a link to your website and your previous productions?' I emailed back.
Quickly, I received a link to what appeared to be the real Sam's website (though scammers often clone websites in order to add faux legitimacy), and a lengthy AI-scraped summary of the real Sam's professional achievements.
Generally, these scams are so incompetent as to be ridiculous. Silly. Amusing, almost. But the reality of the situation suddenly hit me: I was talking to a stranger who had hijacked someone else's identity in the hope that I might be eager, unworldly or desperate enough to snatch at the false hope of interest in my work, all in order to extract as much money out of me as possible. It's not silly, and it's not amusing. It's rotten. It's evil. It preys on vulnerable people and it goes on all day, every day – and not just for aspiring authors.
So I lost interest in toying with 'Sam', and (after writing a quick email to the real Sam to let him know his name had been stolen, just in case he was puzzled by a sudden influx of emails about film offers that didn't exist), I dashed off a quick message to the would-be scammer.
"Dear 'Sam',
"I have to tell you the truth. 'End of a Century' isn't my dream project. My real dream project is 'The Lagos Operation', in which an inept Nigerian scammer claims to be a top Hollywood producer. There's mystery, there's comedy and, ultimately, there's tragedy when our hero forgets that website administrators can easily see where messages have actually come from.
"There's a happy ending, though, when "Sam" begins to realise how shit his scams are and goes off to get a proper job that doesn't involve trying to rip off strangers on the internet.
"Perhaps that's a project we can work on together?
"All the best from your chum, PC"
As yet, Sam has not responded.
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