Medium Writers Union Scams
and fake accounts
A couple of days back, I commented on a story about attic notebooks written by Laini Taylor. Today, I was surprised to see a reply from an account that had the same name as hers, where she praised my comment and asked me to join a group called Medium Writer’s Union. She gave me a url and asked me to get in touch with the group admin.
At this point, I genuinely thought it was a writing group of people who wrote on Medium, although the word 'union' did make me abit uncomfortable.
Anyways, I opened the link and saw an account called Zulie Rane with Zulie’s pic in the DP. It felt a bit weird that Zulie was answering messages on Telegram, but since she was a successful writer on Medium, for a moment I thought she might have started a group to foster other writers. Red flags should really have been dancing in front of me, but they didn’t. I believe in human kindness and thought a famous writer wanted to help other writers. I can be naive at times.
I messaged this person and said I wanted to join the union, and to establish my credentials, I also told her that Laini Taylor had sent me an invite. Gosh, so damn naive. Complete facepalm. She responded immediately with a message that informed me that the union was an international group to help writers connect and collaborate. So far nothing suspicious except for Zulie’s name. There are many writer’s groups and Discord servers, so a group of Medium writers did not sound too far-fetched.
I told her where I was from, and she sent me the group’s details. Red flags appeared as soon as I read this message. It wasn’t the kind of English I’d expect from a writer. The names of people were in upper case and lower case. Seriously? And she said I’d earn $20/week for being a member. That was strange. They were giving me $20 for what, exactly? For ghost-writing articles? It was getting very fishy, but I continued the conversation.
I asked a few questions, which she answered curtly and asked if she could send me the registration link. She seemed to be in a hurry to get me to register. More red flags.
I asked her a few more questions including the fees. In response, she again answered with single words or short sentences and asked if I wanted the registration link. I asked her to send me the registration link.
All this was beginning to get very strange, so I asked her more questions. This back and forth went on for some more time. I asked questions and she gave rapid answers followed by impatient requests to get my registration details.
Finally, I was almost sure it was a scam, so I messaged I’d think about it and got off the chat, and searched for “Medium Writers Union" on Medium,and I was grateful to find posts from other people who had received similar invites.
Well, so that’s that. Alas, I won’t be joining this wonderful shady union that has an $80 one time membership fee and pays members $20 a week for just being members.
Oh, and the person who sent me the message had impersonated Laini Taylor’s account.
I’m glad I didn’t fall for this scam and I hope you don’t either.
