Synopsis

After hearing the story about a close friend’s elderly mother being victimized and bankrupt by a 9-month phone scam, Ruby becomes obsessed with finding the identity of the culprit to retrieve the $170K that was stolen. Along the way she discovers that the scam is part of a much larger crime ring that involves cryptocurrency, social engineering and human hacking. She infiltrates the scam ring to derail the attacks and finds herself pushing legal and moral boundaries in her quest for justice.

How it all began...
Sweet old Coraline was living her retirement in quiet bliss until she got
call from Publisher's Clearing House telling her that she won the big jackpot! She could not wait to tell her family. But her Ben her Prize Concierge told her not to say anything and let it big a big surprise. Ben has a way with people on the phone. He knows how to get them to trust him. He is a professional after all.

Ben targeted Coraline and her family. He has been doing this kind of scam for years and part of his success has been his ability to infiltrate his mark's mind and make them believe he is a trusted friend. Coraline shares very personal family information with Ben including the fact that she has a grand daughter named April in college. Ben finds April and begins a relationship with with her using information she tells him to further scam Coraline. April has no idea about the scam and Coraline does not tell anyone about Ben at first. The scam gets revealed when June, Coraline's daughter and April's mother, learns that her bank accounts have been drained.

June is distraught and tells her best friend, Ruby the story. She shows her the evidence box they turned over to the police. In the box are credit card statements. When Ruby goes through them she is shocked to see that most of the charges are made at stores and restaurant in
neighborhoods that she knows well. She tells June that she could find out who is the scammer. She says it half joking but it is an idea she can't shake. What would happen if she did track down Ben? Could she recover the money?

She knows the PO box he used for mail and that his name is Ben and he has an English accent. The name and the accent are most likely fake but Ruby also has 3 months of his credit card bills to start the hunt. Ben convinced Coraline to open credit cards and send them to him and he used them many times. This gives Ruby a good idea of where he lives or at least operates. Plus since he frequented the same restaurants, grocery stores and of course the PO box, so she surmises there has to be someone who knows him. The stories he told Coraline are lies but he is a real person and someone on that credit card sales sheet knows him.

Ruby uses her social media skills plus some good old fashioned stake outs to begin to unravel the scammer's story. She enlists the help of a local character named Tarry to help her stake out the PO box and he finds Ben has a partner named Sam. Sam seems like the guy in charge, so Ruby follows him and learns Coraline's scam was not random. Now she is in a race to follow the money trail before more victims are added to the list.

The book is based on a true story, and is the first book of a trilogy.

Readers will be interested in reading this book because it deals with he very real threats of social media scams and the loss of privacy that we are dealing with in the digital age. All information is public record and websites track your every move, that kind of data can be used for the wrong reasons in the right hands.

Sales arguments

• Stefanie is a 2X competitor in Defcon's Social Engineering Capture The Flag contest.
• Stefanie has access to high level influencers who will promote her work including social engineering experts like Chris Hadnagy and Michael Bazzell.
• Well known social media expert guests on podcasts that have over 100K downloads can promote the book.
• Stefanie is a well known social media expert speaker at multiple conferences with over XXX [UPDATE]
• Stefanie has a combined personal social audience of over 10,000 people - 4,573 Twitter, 2,401 Instagram,

Similar titles

• A similar book is "The Heist" - Janet Evanovich, Random House (Feb 2014) - This book travels the world of high profile scamming and entails a lot of social engineering in the way that the characters pretend to be other people. a complicated relationship with the scammer and Good social engineers are good actors. The main character of this book is in the FBI but she also is attracted to him. You will see this kind of lethal attraction in my book as well and leads to all sorts of moral dilemma
• A similar book is "The Talented Mr Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith, Coward - McCann. (1955) Readers have been enthralled for decades following the schemes of confidence scammers like Tom Ripley. He is similar to Ben in that his charm and expertise make him so much harder to hate.
• A similar book is “The Widow of Wall Street” by Randy Susan Meyers, Atria (April 2017)- This book is similar in how it examines the loss of trust and consequences of financial fraud. The main character is blindsided by the deceit and betrayal of her husband's ponzi scheme. Their complicated relationship is similar to the relationship between the characters in my book, Coraline, Ben and April.

Audience

This book is going to be fun to read! And it will attract people that are looking for an entertaining read that also examines the complex nature of our social interactions that have evolved from social media and the digital space. The reader demographic is male/female 25-60 yr, skewing slightly more female due to the quirkiness of the main character Ruby. My read likes contemporary suspense and crime novels set in the high tech world and is fascinated with human hacking, computer fraud, digital currency and how people can be manipulated.