In January, the Justice Department charged three people behind a company called PageTurner with cheating 800 authors out of $44 million. The company falsely promised publishing deals, marketing and advertising services, and TV and movie deals, while demanding high fees in return. Self-published authors are especially vulnerable to scams like this.

Here & Now‘s Scott Tong talks to Brent Crane, an investigative reporter who wrote about these scams for Bloomberg Businessweek.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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