Beware of the fake Josh Bernoff

Recently, two authors that I’ve never met contacted me to ask if I was really soliciting business from them.

Bless them, because they revealed a secret: somebody is going around pretending to be me. I’m lucky that these intended victims reached out to me to ask what was going on. (Authors tend to help each other, fortunately.)

I suppose I should take pride in the fact that my image is now prominent enough to be used in a fraud scheme.

If someone purporting to be me contacts you, use this table to tell the difference between the real me and the fake me:

Real Josh	Fake Josh
Real Josh sends emails from a bernoff.com email address.	Fake Josh sends emails from gmail. He (if it is a he) is currently using the email address josh.bernoffcoach@gmail.com , although that will probably change.
Real Josh responds to inbound inquiries from authors, but never sends unsolicited pitches.	Fake Josh attempts to seduce you into working with them with a “friendly” unsolicited message about your work.
Real Josh offers only the services shown on this page and always provides a written estimate.	Fake Josh is cagey about what things will cost and what you’ll be paying for.
Real Josh does free Zoom calls to evaluate your needs.	Fake Josh will never do a video call, because you’d immediately see it wasn’t me.
Real Josh works only with nonfiction authors.	Fake Josh targets anyone he thinks might pay him.
Real Josh sends invoices and accepts payments through this verified PayPal page.	Fake Josh will probably ask you to wire money to some shady offshore account before he disappears forever.
Real Josh never uses AI to create emails.	Fake Josh scrapes information from your web site and then uses AI to try to suck you in. Every word is written by AI. Punch it into Pangram if you want to check.
Real Josh is a curmudgeon and is more likely to tell you what you’re doing wrong than to compliment your work.	Fake Josh will flatter you using your own content. Beware of pure flattery!
Real Josh writes in clever and interesting ways.	Fake Josh is boring.
Real Josh is devastatingly handsome.	Fake Josh is also devastatingly handsome, because they use real Josh’s photo to try to fool you!

What this means to me

I tend to work only with people who reach out to me from my contact form, or are referred to me by other clients.

Since I don’t know these authors who are being solicited with my name, I could act as if this activity is irrelevant to me.

But I have a reputation for helping authors, not ripping them off. I take pride in the fact that every client will gladly give me a referral. Assholes pretending to me could damage a reputation that took decades to build, and that’s a problem.

So yes, I’m quite unhappy about this.

Should you receive an email that appears to be from me, but is from a gmail address, please forward it to me at josh @ bernoff.com. And should you get a solicitation to do business with “me” from a gmail address, report the fake email to gmail support here.

I’m not so special

Many of my friends in publishing have been victimized in the same way. My lawyer told me he’s heard of editors and authors being spoofed like this. I’ve also received AI-generated solicitations from “authors” that were actually imposters.

If you want to protect yourself from this kind of impersonation, here’s what I recommend:

1. Get your own email domain. It’s not free, but unlike a gmail address, an email from your own domain helps people be reasonably sure it’s you. (Even if a scammer spoofs your email address, which is possible, any response will still go to the real you.)
2. Put up a website. Even if it is basic, it should include a contact form. This allows people who’ve been contacted by “you” to find the real you, just as the authors targeted by my scammer did. You can then tell the intended victims not to work with the scammer, and to report the imposter. (You can report it yourself, but if you didn’t receive the email, it’s more difficult for Google to shut it down.)
3. Build up a business that works by word of mouth. Word of mouth recommendations are hard to fake.

One more thing

josh.bernoffcoach@gmail.com is not my email address.

So I really don’t care what happens to email sent to that address.

Authors are creative. So who knows what might happen now.