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From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. It was in early April when I first learned someone was impersonating me. I started getting emails from authors or their publishers asking if I was, in fact, inviting them to come on Forum to talk about their book for the modest fee of $200. I was stunned. Obviously, I wasn't. Forum never charges anyone to be on our show, and our producers engaged directly with authors or publishers. But I was shocked to learn someone was pretending to be me and sending out emails using a Gmail address that could sound pretty convincing, accurately describing the themes of the author's work

and why it would be such a great fit for a discussion on forum, even proposing topics we'd

explore during the interview. And the request for payment wouldn't be in the first email,

but later in the second or third, after the writer had responded, usually with gratitude

for the interest. Just a small

logistical contribution to support production and program preparation, my impersonator would say,

and eventually provide a payment link. No one that I know of paid the scammer, but through this

experience, I did learn that authors and publishers are being

inundated with scams like these. Just a couple months ago, senior writer for the New York Times

Dan Barry wrote about being targeted by one. And last month, Julian Sankton wrote a piece for the

Hollywood reporter titled, A New AI Scam, is targeting thousands of authors. I was one of them.

Julian Sankton joins me now,

...