I had a similar experience with a cookbook I was gifted that turned out to be fake: the author had impressive credentials (top culinary schools, etc.) but when I went to find more information about her I couldn't - all I could find was the same "author photo" for sale on a stock photo site. The book was a cobbled-together collection of recipes, some incomplete, apparently collected haphazardly from around the web.

I left a review saying this on the book, and Amazon deleted it because they thought my review was fraudulent. Of course, the book at the time had a 5-star rating from fake accounts.