Urgent Scam Alert for Authors

A scammer pretending to be linked to Wigtown Festival Company, and using the name of one of our team, is approaching authors with an invitation to take part in a fake literary showcase taking place on Friday 7th November.

They have used AI to generate information specific to each author’s work so it looks legitimate.

The emails have been sent from: [email protected]

These emails are NOT from our organisation and this email address is not owned by Wigtown Festival Company. We advise anyone who receives such an email not to engage with it.

Should you receive such an email, please forward it to Wigtown Festival Company using the email below and report it to Gmail using the ‘Report spam’ function (by selecting the email and clicking on the hexagon icon with an exclamation mark inside it). We would also recommend that you forward the email to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS): [email protected]

We have informed everyone in our network and have also reported it to Gmail. Out of concerns for the safety of anyone who might have been taken in by this, we have also reported this to the police and to the National Cyber Security Centre.

If you have any concerns at all, please contact us at: [email protected].