The book in the river: how a rare edition unmasked a con artist

Fake Relationship Stories · Sep 12, 2026 · 24m

The book in the river: how a rare edition unmasked a con artist

A fisherman pulling trotlines finds a waterlogged Chekhov first edition inscribed "For when you need to remember what's real - always yours, Steven." But the man who signed it was never in Portland, never bought Russian literature, and the woman who received it had no idea it was gone. How did a three-dollar book become the physical evidence that exposed years of carefully constructed fraud?

In this episode, we trace Cheryl Myers' four-month correspondence with a rare book dealer who didn't exist, the two small anomalies she…