The phone calls and emails from the supposed literary agents came in cold and usually targeted elderly, self-published authors, with promises of turning a book into a best-seller or optioning the story to become a Hollywood blockbuster or streaming series.
The promised deals were too good to be true, according to a federal indictment in San Diego. But some of the writers fell for the alleged ruse, which eventually involved the literary agent from a company called PageTurner Press & Media asking for advance payments for services such as book insurance, hiring editors to help update the book or hiring publicists to promote it.
After weeks or months of stringing the authors along and asking for additional up-front payments, the PageTurner agent would cut off all communication without providing the promised services, according to the recently unsealed indictment.
All told, the FBI identified more than 800 alleged fraud victims who collectively lost more than $44 million to PageTurner dating back to at least 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego.
The indictment alleges that Gemma Traya Austin, a 58-year-old Chula Vista resident, was the registered owner and public face of PageTurner. It alleges that her nephew, Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, 32, and his boyfriend and business partner, Bryan Navales Tarosa, 34, ran a company in the Philippines employing the scam artists who impersonated the literary agents.
FBI agents arrested Sordilla and Tarosa, both citizens of the Philippines, last month while they were visiting Austin at her Chula Vista home. The agents arrested Austin three days later and have seized the PageTurner website.
The trio has since been indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Defense attorney Jay Monico, who represents Sordilla, said he has not yet received the evidence the FBI has against his client. “That will ultimately put into perspective what actually happened,” Monico said.
Defense attorney Peter Blair said his client, Austin, was “ignorant and naïve” as to any potential criminal activity. Blair said Austin is a mother of four from the Philippines with little formal education and limited English skills. He said Austin helped raise Sordilla and thought of him more like a son, even naming two of her own sons after him.
“She was presented with a situation from her nephew, who had become exceedingly rich, that put her in the position where she would be starting these businesses in her name and working under his direction,” Blair said. “… She wasn’t sophisticated enough to see the (potential) red flags.”
Blair said he also has not received the evidence that prosecutors must turn over, and his client is not accusing her co-defendants of wrongdoing. But Blair said he expected the evidence would show Austin was not “the mastermind or had any control over the business decisions or potential fraudulent acts. She was acting at the direction of (Sordilla).”
Tarosa’s attorney from Federal Defenders of San Diego did not respond to a message seeking comment.
According to the indictment and earlier criminal complaints, Sordilla was the president and CEO of a company called Innocentrix Philippines. Tarosa, who prosecutors described as Sordilla’s domestic partner and Blair described as Sordilla’s boyfriend, was the vice president of operations for the company.
The indictment alleges that “conspirators working for Innocentrix” were the ones contacting authors and impersonating literary agents as well as executives from major publishers, movie studios and video streaming services.
A 67-year-old man who lived in Argentina told investigators that a PageTurner publicist emailed him one day claiming that PageTurner wanted to turn his book into a series for one of the biggest video streaming services, prosecutors alleged. The email included a supposed letter of endorsement from the studio, and over the next year the victim wired $97,000 to PageTurner for various services that were never rendered.
The FBI began investigating PageTurner in 2022, according to a criminal complaint. Even before that, word had spread on the internet warning authors about PageTurner. The blog Writer Beware, which maintains a massive list of what it says are similar scam companies, posted a story about PageTurner in 2021. The book publishing giant Macmillan Publishers also posted a “publishing fraud alert” that listed PageTurner as a company that “Macmillan does not work with or have any relationship with.”
All three defendants in the case remain in custody and are expected back in court for a motion hearing next month.
