Late last week I received an email ostensibly from Deb Hutton, a host at a Toronto radio station, inviting me to appear on her talk show to promote my recent book Public Representations. Deb Hutton is a well-known Ontario politico, a former chief of staff to Premier Mike Harris. The email, which landed in my inbox, contained a link to a recent interview Hutton did with Ontario Education Minister Paul Callandra, posted on YouTube. And I did find her show on Newstalk 1010 as well as on various podcasts. As Public Representations deals with film and streaming series about politics, including Canadian politics, it seemed plausible that she would be interested in my book.

Based on this information, I replied to express my interest in an interview. Email Hutton asked me to send her author materials such as short bios, headshots, a book cover image, and promotional links. I replied that I would do it early this week. Email Hutton then started to send me cheerful daily reminders. Soon the reminder included a fee of $400, payable via Stripe to something called EGWU Properties LLC. She urged me to pay quickly to lock in a date. At that point, it became clear that this was a new version of the book club scam I posted about 6 months ago.

The new wrinkle is that the ask is not on behalf of a nonexistent book club, but on behalf of an actual media personality and their program. Perhaps that is why it went into the inbox, rather than being caught by the spam filter and sent to the junk folder. The email address is deb.newstalk.fm@gmail.com, which at first glance looks like a real email address for Ms. Hutton. But anyone can create a gmail address using someone else’s name.

I wonder how long Email Hutton will keep bombarding me with emails though I have stopped communicating with her. I feel embarrassed to have replied to the initial email. But I’m glad I didn’t waste any time providing materials for her.

I also wonder how the real Deb Hutton and Newstalk 1010 feel about a scam using their names. I did send the email trail to the station but haven’t heard from them. I’m sure they want the impersonation to stop, but it may not be evident how they could do that or whether it is even worth the effort.

This type of phishing, too, shall pass. Unfortunately, not soon enough.