Once they had dreams of Hollywood fame. They believed they had a once-in-a-lifetime dream of having a big studio produce their film. They imagined red carpet introductions and film audiences worldwide seeing a dramatic film made from their book. Then, their fantasy collapsed into dust, and their Hollywood dream shattered, as they discovered they had been a victim of a big scam to get their money.
As part of the process, they paid more and more to get the material the big studios honches said they needed to show producers and finalize a deal – a treatment, a script, a logline synopsis, a pitch deck, and sizzle reel. They did, in fact, receive very good professionally done material by a successful screenwriter. But then their material went nowhere, because the scam was that there was no Hollywood deal, no executives from big production companies and no studios clamoring for their book and willing to pay $80,000 or more for the filmrights. That part of the deal was all invented by the scammers.
They were only caught because the ghostwriter, Gini Graham Scott, (who had written legitimate material needed to evaluate and green light a deal by real producers) spoke to one of the victims. They spoke because one victim called to make a payment through her, since Paypal and other payment processors wouldn’t accept her money, believing the company to receive it was engaged in fraudulent activities.
Then, as the victim discussed payment arrangements with her and described what the company was doing, Scott realized that the company she was working for was engaged in a scam, and she was a victim, too, since they used her reputation to lure in customers and get them to pay more and more for written materials and marketing services. As she spoke to a dozen previous clients she worked with after the company referred her, she discovered they had been scammed, too, since their dreams of a film based on their book were all based on a series of lies.
The scammers had no real industry connections and simply used the names of real executives for a few scam team members who pretended to be them. So the claimed big deals weren’t real. When the victim ran out of money or didn’t want to pay anymore, the scammers simply said the producers or studios changed their minds. So the victims’ Hollywood dream ended, and they lost whatever money they had invested. Some lost as much as $20,000 to $40,000.
Now a film based on their experiences, Conned: A True Story, has just been released by Gravitas Ventures on Amazon Prime, iTunes, and other major online platforms. The documentary, based on the book The Big Con, features two of the biggest victims, Robert Newman, a very religious Christian who believed the book-to-film opportunity was a gift from God and lost over $35,000, and Brenda Heller, whose discussions with Gini Graham Scott, revealed the scam.
But since the individual losses were too small and the scammers were based in the Philippines, law enforcement couldn’t do anything to pursue the scammers and there was no way to get back the victim’s money. Yet, perhaps someday, maybe their books might be turned into films by real producers, since the books of many victims really do have potential, according to Scott. Perhaps the film Conned: A True Story might even help them really get that deal.
As Amazon Prime describes it, Conned features “True stories of scams: bank accounts wiped out, lives all but lost. The survivors reveal the dark secrets of the con.”
And as Scott describes it an article on Medium and Substack, and on a series of social media posts:
“A film based on my experiences in a ghostwriting scam just appeared on Amazon Prime, and I watched it last night. It features several people who were scammed in a book-to-film scam in which I wrote scripts, synopses, and other materials needed for pitching a book to film producers. However, the scammers invented producers from Newline and other major film companies, so what I wrote never went anywhere. Then, speaking to a client I discovered the scam and after that contacted a dozen others who got scammed. The film features their stories and an interview with me about what happened and how the scammers used my reputation to convince clients to work with them.
“This experience led Scott to examine other scams, leading a series of books about them, published by American Leadership Books. The first was The Big Con featuring the stories of a dozen victims of the book-to-film scam, which led to “Conned: A True Story.” Then, she wrote I Was Scammed, about several dozen scams and how to avoid them, which turned into “Con Artists Unveiled”, also released on Amazon Prime by Gravitas Ventures. And most recently, she wrote: Scams in the Digital Age, also published by American Leadership Books and being filmed in February 2025 as the third documentary on scams. Besides being on Amazon Prime, the films can be seen on Apple TV as Conned: A True Story — Apple TV and Con Artists Unveiled — Apple TV. And they are on a growing number of film platforms.
Medium
https://tinyurl.com/mufahjem
Substack:
https://tinyurl.com/3xawmf8x
