Brent Crane (3:37)

Kevin obviously, is overjoyed. He gets a contract. And there's all these stipulations in the contract that say in order to go through with this deal, you have to have a screenplay developed, as in, you.

Josh Dean (3:51)

Need to pay someone to write it. That'll run you 100 grand.

Brent Crane (3:55)

You have to sell so many books, which means you have to pay for marketing, and the list just goes on and on of all these services that he has to pay for in order for Netflix to make his book into a series.

Josh Dean (4:09)

This is Brent Crane, by the way. He's an investigative journalist based in San Diego, the same city where Tim Ray claimed to be living. Brent reported on Kevin and this story for Bloomberg Businessweek in the summer of 2025. If you're wondering why Kevin didn't see through it, part of it was desire. When you want something badly enough, you're willing to ignore a lot of warning signs. But also, this wasn't some hacky scam. Ray and the various parties he claimed to be working with concocted a convincing facade. Deal memos, websites, lengthy contracts that arrived via DocuSign, detailed budgets. It all looked extremely legit.

Brent Crane (4:50)

This goes on over, like, two years or so. And after all of it, nothing has moved forward with this supposed Netflix deal. And he's out of $500,000.

Josh Dean (5:02)

Plus, you heard that correctly, a half million dollars of Kevin's own money sunk into this dream.

Brent Crane (5:13)

So, yeah, it really just sort of almost ruined his entire livelihood, which is.

Josh Dean (5:18)

Sad and sort of astounding, probably, if you're one of those people who's never cared to write a book. But if you have, I think you might get it. I certainly do. This is Chameleon, the weekly show about people who pretend to be something they aren't. And I'm Josh De. This week, a publishing scam that hits a little too close to home. The Story of page turner and the vultures who prey on ambition. After the break.

Brent Crane (5:47)

Chameleon, Chameleon.

Josh Dean (5:49)

This is Chameleon Weekly Books have an almost mystical power over us. Me as much as anyone. I was a writer first. I still am. And in addition to making podcasts, I've published two books with another one on the way this year. So I get it. Having a book published just feels like an accomplishment. It's validating creatively in a way. Few things are. But I can also tell you it's been a journey. A journey that has not made me rich. Still, it's a dream a lot of people have. One of the things I hear most often after telling people I'm a writer is that they too have a book idea. Would I like to hear about it? And while the traditional publishing market remains hard to penetrate, a sort of shadow publishing industry, a mostly legal but often shady alternative path, has sprung up and thrived. The blanket term is self publishing. But this large and growing niche, it contains multitudes and it has no lack of customers.

Brent Crane (6:49)

I think a lot of amateur writers just think they're way better than they are and they are very confident that their book is the next Harry Potter or something like that. And if only if it could get better marketing, if only it could get more readers, people would recognize their talent. There are lots and lots and lots of people out there like that.

Josh Dean (7:16)

Last year, more than 2 million books were self published in the US alone, up from just a few hundred thousand a decade ago. Though self publishing paying to have your book printed and sold goes back a long way, like many, many decades, the industry has absolutely exploded in the Internet era. For writers who can't or don't want to navigate the traditional publishing world, self publishing feels like a lifeline, a clear path to achieving this enormous goal. A bucket list item in many cases. And so of course, it makes sense that there's a shady side of the industry. Companies like page Turner are selling a dream. They're capitalizing on people's belief in themselves.

Brent Crane (7:54)

That is really the emotional vulnerability that these scammers target, and they really exploit it quite successfully.

Josh Dean (8:05)

He's not kidding. Kevin's story, as horrible as it is, may not even be the worst of it.

Brent Crane (8:11)

I heard rumors of people losing a million dollars the page turner.

Josh Dean (8:16)

But that kind of scamming prowess, if true, might explain why this company, of all the questionable self publishing outfits out there, hit the Department of Justice's radar. Because in January 2025, three of the people running page turner, which turned out to be based in Cebu, a city in the Philippines, were arrested following an indictment by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. The suspects arrested were Michael Chris Trya Sordia and Brian Navales Torosa, both of the Philippines, plus Gemma Traya Austin, who was the registered agent for Page Turner in the U.S. as well as Sordia's aunt. The indictment alleged that over a seven year period starting in September 2017, the defendants, quote, used Page Turner to operate a book publishing scam in which the conspirators contacted individual authors through unsolicited calls and emails. As part of the conspiracy, the scammers falsely told victims their works had been selected for acquisition by publishers or movie studios and fraudulently convinced victims to send payments for various services before the victim author's work could be published or optioned to studios. What started with the promise of a Hollywood dream turned into a devastating nightmare for victims, said U.S. attorney Tara McGrath. Authors should stay vigilant, do their research, and think twice before giving money to anyone promising a blockbuster deal. If you or anyone you know has been targeted in a similar scheme, please report it to the FBI immediately. According to the DOJ, the FBI identified more than 800 victims of the scheme who collectively lost more than $44 million.

Brent Crane (9:56)

But the half a dozen former Page Turner employees I interviewed, they all thought that was a significant undercount.

Josh Dean (10:05)

Either way, the scale of it was pretty stunning. What allowed Page Turner to not just exist but also to thrive is the ethical gray area where a lot of self publishers live. The basic idea of paying a company to publish your book and paying more to market it, that's totally legal, but it's also often scammy feeling. As the director of the alliance of Independent Authors told Brent Crane for his story, almost by definition, people in that space have been bad actors because they are posing as publishers and pretending to be something they aren't.

Brent Crane (10:38)

There's also complaints that these companies have predatory practices where they just hound writers and upsell them. And that's really the nucleus of what these scam companies have sort of built themselves off of is this this legitimate industry of of self publishing.

Josh Dean (10:57)

The Author's Guild has a whole section of its website to warn writers about self publishers and has this high level advice. The first rule of thumb is that if someone solicits you out of the blue with an offer that seems too good to be true, it probably is. I should say the core idea here isn't new at all. Victoria Strauss has been writing the blog Writer Beware to warn authors about literary scams and schemes since the late 1990s when the Internet was young and primitive. But it's gotten way worse in recent years.

Victoria Strauss (11:30)

I started seeing all these awful stories about feature literary agents and scammy editors and vanity publishers, and it was like this whole underbelly of the publishing industry that I had no idea existed.

Josh Dean (11:50)

Just to say Victoria suffers from spasmodic dysphonia. That's the same neurological disorder RFK Jr. Has, and it affects her voice.

Victoria Strauss (11:59)

Before self publishing became such a big thing, there was a point where actually incompetence was more problem and deliberate fraud. You know, agents coming into the business with no relevant professional background or publishers that started up, people with no experience in publishing. And that's still a danger for writers. But you know, the days when incompetence was the thing you mostly had to watch out for are gone. And now it's absolutely a scams and fraud.

Josh Dean (12:39)

Victoria says this industry, or whatever it is, is gigantic. She was not surprised at all to hear that Paige Turner was based in the Philippines, which turns out to be a nexus for predatory outfits. What's happening in the Philippines with outfits like Page Turner, Victoria says, is a very specific and lucrative niche.

Victoria Strauss (12:57)

The Philippine scams really just stick to publishing related scams. They focus almost exclusively on people who have already self published, as opposed to soliciting people who have manuscript and want to self publish. Similar scams exist in all the creative industries. But for whatever reason, there are just vastly more aspiring writers than say, aspiring artists or aspiring musicians. And it's just a huge pool. It just never seems to. I mean, you can't tap it out.

Josh Dean (13:46)

The Philippines of it all. That's one thing that drew Brent Crane to this story in the first place. He was fascinated to learn that Cebu in particular was a sort of hub. And there's a reason.

Brent Crane (13:56)

There's dozens and dozens of companies that are doing this, but most of them seem to be owned by this one company called Author Solutions, which is this sort of multibillion dollar company now owned by a private equity company.

Josh Dean (14:12)

Author Solutions is based in the U.S. but the company has long outsourced most of its operations to Cebu City.

Brent Crane (14:19)

There's been two class action lawsuits against Author Solutions in the last like 10 or 15 years. One was dismissed, the other was settled out of court. So a lot of writers complain that what Author Solutions is somehow illegal, but.

Josh Dean (14:37)

No judge has yet to declare any of the activity illegal. It seems that Paige Turner, on the other hand, decided to just leap right over that murky ethical ground into outright fraud. More after the break. Welcome back to Chameleon. Page Turner was founded in 2017 by Michael Sordia, one of those two men arrested in January of 2025. Sordia grew up in a poor, fatherless household in Cebu City. In interviews, he has described himself as a hustler working various angles to make money. And in his early 20s, he landed a job at Ex Libris, an imprint of Author Solutions. It was there that he learned the ropes of the author services industry.

Brent Crane (15:23)

He must have just thought, you know, I can just do this myself without any of the guardrails. And that's what he does. He sets up this company. He actually calls the company Innocentrics, and he advertises it as a mainstream outsourcing company. One scammer who says he quit because he just felt, like, so guilty about it, he told me that Mike directed him to, like, get creative. That was the words he used when he talked about having to hit, you know, like, crazy high quotas because all the scammers would have these quotas they had to hit for how much money they were bringing in.

Josh Dean (16:01)

Soon enough, Mike was raking in cash and loving life. He diversifies his portfolio. He buys, among other things, a beauty pageant, a construction company, a coffee chain, even a whole beach resort.

Brent Crane (16:13)

He's spending a lot of money, and he's also hiring a lot of employees. And he's taking them on these, like, you know, Wolf of Wall street esque party trips on yachts and renting ballrooms in luxury hotels for, like, these big galas.

Josh Dean (16:28)

And this is how he ends up on the DOJ's radar. He's just taken too much money from too many victims like Kevin Dettler.

Brent Crane (16:36)

Mike Sedelia had an aunt here in San Diego who was the registered agent for Paige Turner in America, because Paige Trainer would tell all of its victims that they were based in San Diego and they had registered the company here. So in December 2024, Mike Cerdiglia and his business romantic partner Brian Tirosa, they traveled to San Diego to meet with his aunt. And that's when the FBI swoop in and arrest him. So if he hadn't come to America, I mean, he very well likely would have just continued on the scam.

Josh Dean (17:14)

Because a US Indictment carries no weight in the Philippines, Mike and his associates could well have just kept at it. Authorities back home seem to simply not care.

Brent Crane (17:24)

In Cebu, Serdelia's family, they had this press conference with this spokesman, and they claimed that Serdelia and Torosa completely deny everything, and they're blaming all the scamming on rogue sales agents.

Josh Dean (17:41)

Brett knew that he couldn't unravel the story of Paige Turner as the most brazen of fraudulent self publishers without going to Cebu City to try and see this scamming industry up close. But he also didn't want to just parachute in. He needed sources, at least one who could take him behind the curtain. But he was struggling to get anyone to talk.

Brent Crane (18:02)

I'm mostly on Facebook because Facebook's, like, super popular in the Philippines. I had spoken to one guy named Mike Gorn. Before I got there, he had scanned another victim who I spoke to. So that's how I learned of him. And I reached out to him on Facebook, and to my surprise, he responded to me and said he was open to speaking. And he was just very open and frank about his scamming in a way that I just found very suspect. As a journalist, you're always trying to figure out what's someone's motive for speaking with me. It's just very important because it colors everything of what they're saying. He said he was emotionally conflicted about having scanned for Paige Turner, but the tone of his voice, it was just very clear that wasn't the case.

Josh Dean (18:45)

They talked first by phone before Brent left California. And Mike was surprisingly open about the idea that he'd rip people off at Paige Turner's direction.

Brent Crane (18:54)

I told him up front, you know, I can't pay you for your time. But right after the interview, he messages me and he says, hey, can you like, PayPal me $25 for my wife's birthday or something? So it was just sort of this inauspicious start.

Josh Dean (19:11)

Brett made it to Cebu just fine. He hired a local fixer named Max to help him navigate the reporting on the ground as an American journalist who doesn't speak the local language. And the two men arranged a meeting with Mike Gorn, this self proclaimed scammer at a local Starbucks.

Brent Crane (19:26)

He's just like, just very big sort of guy with a bunch of tattoos on his arm, you know, shaved head. He kind of looks like a sumo wrestler. He's wearing, like, dark sunglasses, you know, a white polo shirt. He sort of waddles in the Starbucks. I can just see, like, displeasure flicker across his eyes when he sees that I haven't come alone.

Josh Dean (19:48)

Still, Mike sat down at his table and the interview proceeded.

Brent Crane (19:51)

It's much like the initial phone interview where he's just like, very frank about his scamming. He's reciting the spills is what they call them, which is like the sort of ruse that they use to hook writers.

Josh Dean (20:04)

It truly is a ruse. Salesmanship that's just oozing with lies.

Brent Crane (20:09)

Oh, hi, Linda. I love your book. You know, I used to represent J.K. rowling, and I really think you have great potential. It's just clear that he's getting such pleasure out of recounting these stories.

Josh Dean (20:20)

This was gold for Brent's story, but there's one part of it he just couldn't figure out.

Brent Crane (20:25)

And again, I'm asking, you know, why are you talking with me? And then he sort of comes up with another reason. He said, well, I thought maybe you could tell me if Mike Serdiglia had implicated me in the trial in America. And I tell him, well, the trial hasn't even started yet, so that's sort of a moot point.

Josh Dean (20:42)

The situation in that Starbucks began to.

Brent Crane (20:44)

Get tense, I should say. Also during the interview, this other big guy comes into the Starbucks and sits down at the table, like, right next to us, and he just stares out into space and doesn't order anything. And it's just very clear. He's, like, eavesdropping on us.

Josh Dean (21:01)

Eventually, Brent just points him out. Who is this dude? He's my driver, Mike says. And things didn't get any less shady from there.

Brent Crane (21:10)

At the end of the interview, Mike Gorn lets it be known that he has this cachet of documents that he said he had pilfered from Page Turner that he's happy to provide to me, but of course, he can't email them. He has to deliver it in person.

Josh Dean (21:29)

And so a couple days later, they met again.

Brent Crane (21:32)

Mike shows up literally two hours late to the interview. Me and Max are just sitting in this cafe, like, waiting for him, and he's like, I'm on my way. I'm on my way. He shows up, he doesn't have the documents, and he says, oh, the driver is on his way. The alarm bells are just going off my head. This whole time I was saying, we really should probably leave. Like, this doesn't feel right, because Mike, during this time, he keeps getting up and, like, leaving and coming back and saying, oh, I think the driver might be here. And then he would, like, come back and be like, oh, he's not here yet. At one point, Mike's gone for, like, 20 minutes or something. And then Mike returns, and he says, the driver's here, but he's at this other cafe on the other side of the mall. And so we have to go walk and find him. And me and Max sit down in the Cafe. And as we're sitting there, a young couple walks into the cafe, sits at the table right next to us and doesn't order anything, don't speak, just sort of stare at each other. Immediately I'm like, these guys are with Mike. Mike comes back into the cafe and he just looks furious. He starts like ignoring me and starts speaking to my fixer. And he says, do you really know this guy? Like, I don't trust him. And so I'm like, Mike, what's the problem? What's going on? And Mike just looks at me and his eyes are just like bulging and he's like, I don't like how you're treating me. I can't even explain to you how distraught he looks. He looks so pained, yelling at me. He's like, I can't believe how you don't trust me. I'm just trying to help you. Apparently the driver has arrived. So he's pointing at the driver. We're in this courtyard and he's like, just come see the driver. He has the documents. I am convinced that I'm being scammed. Now I'm walking into a trap. I get probably within like, you know, 10ft of this driver and he's wearing sunglasses and has a flat brim hat, you know, really scraggly beard, like just very skinny. And he's like holding this manila folder. Mike Gorn had told me that, you know, the documents were like 60 plus pages, right? So you'd expect like a 30 thick folder. Clearly nothing in the folder. And that for me was like the absolute end. All I say to Max, I'm like, we're leaving. Like, you know, we really need to leave now. I start walking away at a pretty fast pace, like almost running, and Mike Gorn just erupts and just starts like screaming curses at me. And yeah, just sort of that sets off this like low speed chase through the mall. Me and Max are sort of making our way through the car park and Mike Gorn is just berating us, screaming, sort of, you need to pay the driver. Slash you need to pay me. Like, it sort of goes back and forth. He kind of can't keep his like scam lies straight. And he's screaming in English and then like the local language messiah. And all these like armed security guards in the mall are doing nothing. I'm screaming back at him, he's screaming at me. It's like it's a scene, right? Like everyone in the mall is looking. I could have easily outrun him, right? But Max has this like bad Leg, so he had to limp. So I'm like 10 or 12ft ahead of Max, like, not running, but not walking either, because I don't want to leave Max there with this guy. Guy. And we get to the car, and Mike comes to the passenger door side and just, you know, I'm trying to close the door, and he won't let me close it. And he's got his, like, huge arm, like, thrown in the door. You know, Max, like, pulls out money and sort of like throwing it at him, you know, like a few bills that he has in his wallet. I'm grabbing his arm. I'm trying to, like, pry his fingers off the door so I can close the door. And I'm just praying that he doesn't pull out a weapon, right? Like, if he pulls out a gun or a knife, like, I don't know what happens there. Finally, Max does, like, pull out properly of the parking space and, like, you know, kicks it out, and Mike is forced to pull his arm out of the. The car. But, you know, before he does that, he says, brent, I'll find you. I'm going to send people to the airport, you know, I'll fucking kill you. So, yeah, I'm properly spooked. I've never done this before. I showed up to the airport with no ticket. I left that night. First flight to Hong Kong I could find.

Josh Dean (26:19)

The question Brent had is the same question I had. What did Mike actually want here?

Brent Crane (26:25)

My sense was that he was going to use these terror tactics, which is what another victim of his described them to me as to, you know, bring me to an ATM and just basically force me to take out as much money as I could.

Josh Dean (26:43)

Believe it or not, this encounter at the mall wasn't the end of it. Mike Gorn was committed to the bit.

Brent Crane (26:48)

One of the first things I did was block his Facebook. But I got another Facebook message from someone purporting to be his wife, which is probably just like him. On another Facebook account, it had photos of him claiming that he had broken his arm and, like, the whole car thing and that I needed to send money for his medical care.

Josh Dean (27:11)

I've got to say, part of me respects the hustle, but a much bigger part of me thinks that this points to a real darkness behind the whole page turner operation.

Brent Crane (27:20)

There's part of you that thinks, oh, it's like books, right? Like, it's literary, bookworm stuff. Like, they can't be that bad, these scammers, but they totally are. I mean, they're violent criminals like any other Sort of criminal gang that's taking in millions of dollars. That's really what I learned from that experience.

Josh Dean (27:41)

Here's the thing about the page turner bust. Three alleged criminals who preyed on ambition and took money from people who mostly couldn't afford to lose it were stopped, at least temporarily. And maybe they'll stop scamming. But the larger trend here, it's definitely not stopping. Scamming in the Internet era is just too easy. You can talk to anyone, anywhere from your home computer. And because many of the worst offenders are based abroad in very far flung places, there's very little the FBI can actually do. Which is why Victoria Strauss, who's been trying to warn authors for a quarter century, feels a little defeated.

Victoria Strauss (28:17)

When we got all of this started, we really thought that we could put ourselves out of business because we would just put out so many warnings and we would educate so many people. We wouldn't be needed anymore. But I have to say, it's worse now than it ever has been in, you know, 25 years of tracking scams. It's just awful out there.

Josh Dean (28:47)

Still, she says, Paige Turner really stands out.

Victoria Strauss (28:51)

So egregious, so greedy, so incredibly convoluted with these fake movie studios and fake organizations they created and all of the stuff that they did and the amounts of money that they took. Because there are a lot of scams that are pretty bad, but page turner is the only one that I know of that has taken, you know, in excess of $300,000 from any one person. So I think the greediness and the sheer number of people that they targeted, it broke through the kind of barriers that keep these scams kind of under the radar because people reached out to the FBI, you know, been scammed, and the amounts were significant enough and the scams were egregious enough that the FBI took notice and actually investigated. I mean, it's a pig butchering scam. They draw you in, you know, they boil you like a frog, and by the time you get to the end of the thing, you spent $600,000 in little pieces.

Josh Dean (30:07)

When Victoria first started seeing scams of this kind, back around 2014, one of the tip offs was poor grammar, because so many of the scammers are based overseas. Scamming in a second language. But with the arrival of AI which can write and edit your prose in any language, it's harder to sniff scammers out. One thing Victoria has noticed is that the business of author scamming is very entrepreneurial. New outfits are constantly springing up and identifying the true scams can be tough though. There are some general rules.

Victoria Strauss (30:37)

You know, the publishing industry is secretive and the movie industry even more so. So, you know, you can pardon people for not knowing what the protocols are like. The number one sign right now is out of blue solicitation. And I tell authors that any out of the blue publishing or movie rights related email or phone call that you can't directly trace to a contact or a query that you yourself made is highly likely to be a scam. I mean, you can never say never in this business because literary agents sometimes do reach out to authors that they're interested in. Small presses may do the same. So it's hard to draw an absolute line. But any kind of solicitation that you get out of the blue these days is very, very likely to be a scam. I hear from a lot of children's picture book authors, and I mean especially you would think that Lionsgate is not going to be wanting to make a movie of your book about a mouse who has adventures.

Josh Dean (31:57)

You know, policing these scams is hard. The amounts of money being taken generally are just too small to get the attention of authorities. There's also the shame factor. All scammers benefit from the reality that a person who falls for a scam is often too embarrassed to tell anyone.

Victoria Strauss (32:15)

It feels like whack a mole and it feels like Sisyphus. You know, I feel like I'm constantly pushing this knowledge boulder uphill and never get past a certain point, when will.

Josh Dean (32:30)

Her life's work be done?

Victoria Strauss (32:32)

I suppose I'll die one day. I'll probably be at my computer answering an email. And.

Josh Dean (32:44)

Kevin Dettler, the hunter you heard about at the top of the episode, claimed some responsibility for being drawn into the scam which cost him his life savings. He says he was just greedy, but I'm not so sure. More, I think this is just what effective scams do. They identify these vulnerabilities that many of us have and exploit them.

Victoria Strauss (33:05)

People want to write memoirs or they want to pass on their experience of some traumatic life event. That's a big draw, I think, to self publishing. And there I think people are especially vulnerable because it's not just a book they wrote, it's, you know, their life experience. It illustrates the intense psychological pressure that these scams put on people. And you know, they're, they're adept, you know, what buttons to push. I mean, especially with writers and especially self published writers who just are laboring in obscurity and you know, want to get their stories to the world or want to have a writing career and nobody's buying your book, nobody's paying attention. I mean, it's just, it's a very potent psychological button that these scammers push.

Josh Dean (34:14)

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean. This episode was written by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Siminoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Theme music by Ewin Leitramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Ch Chair, and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help, and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email us@chameleonpodcampsidemedia.com or leave us a message at a special number We've set up, 201-743-8368, dial plus one from outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

Victoria Strauss (35:25)

I think Chuck would approve.