I have a crush on a pregnant woman, he thought to himself as he ushered Courtney into the living room.A huge, stupid crush which is futile and inappropriate and…
… too wonderful to let go.
“So, what’s the problem?” Travis said, working hard to offer an easy smile as he waved Courtney towards the sofa.
“I think there’s a scammer lurking around on your author page on Facebook,” she replied, looking unhappy. “In fact, I know there is. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, and I can see that some of your fans are already being duped, so I figured I’d better let you know straight away, but when you weren’t answering your phone, I didn’t want to wait any longer so I came here to tell you about it in person, and?—”
“Okay, calm down and take a deep breath,” Travis said gently, seeing how worked up she was getting. “I’m sure whatever is going on, we can sort it out, and I don’t want you getting yourself in a twist about it and causing yourself or the baby any unnecessary stress. Okay?”
“Okay, you’re right,” she said, blowing out a breath. “It’s just… well, when you see for yourself, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.” She pointed to his laptop on the desk. “Do you mind logging into your Facebook account so I can show you what’s going on?”
Travis nodded and moved to the desk. Courtney appeared at his side, peeking over his shoulder as he tapped at the keys. Her proximity made the skin on his neck tingle and it took him a few attempts to hit the right keys on the laptop.
“Eek, I just saw the document you were working on and realise Ididinterrupt your writing, after all. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This sounds important. Let’s get it sorted out.”
After Travis logged in, Courtney took control of the mouse and clicked through to the most recent post on his page.
As she’d suggested when they’d spent time together at the park, she’d written a short post to introduce herself to the fans on his social media page, which had prompted a flurry of welcoming comments from his kind readers, most of whom also expressed concern for his recuperating assistant Ruth and sent their best wishes.
Courtney had responded to these comments with courtesy and efficiency, and then followed it up with another post which explained that she was reading the Maura Shaw mysteries for the first time and hoped some of the Travis’s social media followers might like to join her in a read-along.
This suggestion had sparked plenty of interest and enthusiasm, judging by what Travis could now see on the screenas Courtney scrolled through the long stream of comments on the post in search of whatever it was she wanted to show him.
“It starts here,” she said, highlighting a comment with the mouse and stepping back so he could read it. “This person, Jenna Jade, posts a comment and starts a conversation with someone else who’s fairly active on your author page. There’s a bit of back and forth between them, and then this Jenna person says she works for your publisher and has limited edition signed hardback copies of your books available for sale and asks the fan if she’d like to buy one. When she seems interested, Jenna Jade says she’ll send her a direct message to sort out payment and delivery. Obviously, that seemed fishy to me, so I dug into the Jenna Jade profile and I’m pretty sure it’s a scammer.”
Travis scanned the comments between the reader and the Jenna Jade persona, pleased that Courtney had realised something was off.
“I don’t have any limited edition hardbacks,” Travis said. “Just the regular hardbacks that are available in most bookshops. I’ve certainly signed plenty of those over the last few years, but they’re not a rare commodity worth much more than the standard retail price. And anyway, no one from my publishing company would ever directly interact with fans like this and offer them things for sale.”
“That’s what I thought. I found this Jenna Jade person has popped up elsewhere in the comments on this post too,” Courtney said, using the mouse to scroll further down the screen. “She tells another fan that she has Maura Shaw merchandise for sale—mugs and tote bags—and that seems to get quite a bit of interest.”
“My publisher doesn’t sell anything like that, and neither do I, so either this person is flogging unlicensed products or it’s just a basic scam to trick people into sending money for things that don’t exist.”
“I always thought it was weird how people fell for this kind of thing, but when I looked at how the Jenna Jade character slid into the comments and sparked conversations with people and made it seem like they were a legitimate person from your publishing company, I can see how it might trip people up.”
“These scammers wouldn’t do any of this if it wasn’t making money. You did the right thing bringing this to me.”
“There was no guidance in your marketing file about what to do in a case like this, or I would’ve handled it myself.”
“It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, there are steps to take. First, we block the profile so this Jenna Jade persona can’t interact with the readers and fans anymore, then I’ll submit a report about the profile and hopefully it will be taken down. I’ll also post an alert, letting fans know about the scam and reminding them that neither me nor my publisher would ever offer anything for sale directly on social media and would never ask for personal details or bank information.”
Courtney nodded. “When I noticed in the comments that some of your fans looked ready to hand over bank details, I wanted to jump in with a post and warn them not to do that, but figured I should speak to you first in case that was the wrong move.”
“We’ll sort it now.”
Travis tapped out a quick post, warning fans that there was a scammer trolling the page and trying to trick people out of money. He assured them that neither he nor his publisher would ever offer anything for sale directly on social media in this way, and would only ever provide links to legitimate retail sites where his new books could be purchased. After reminding people to be vigilant on social media, he apologised for the nuisance of finding a scammer at large amongst his fans and promised he was taking action to get the profile shut down.
Once the post was live, he blocked the offending persona of ‘Jenna Jade’ and submitted a report to the social media platform detailing the suspected scammer.
“There, all taken care of,” he said as he finished the sequence of tasks. “I’ll add this stuff into the guidance document so it’s there in case you need it in the future. Fingers crossed you don’t, but these scammers always reappear eventually, unfortunately.”
“Sorry I interrupted your writing,” Courtney said.
“Don’t apologise. You did the right thing coming to me with this. I should’ve given you a steer in the guidance document about how to deal with this problem. My mistake.”
“I hope none of your fans handed over money or personal details to this Jenna Jade person. Maybe I should’ve jumped in sooner and warned people?”
