More on the Margaret Jones debacle:
To quote Galley Cat on the subject...
Maybe Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press is right when she emails that this whole fake memoir trend points to a dysfunction at "New York commercial houses." As she analyzes the situation, "Bookselling is all about categories, and the Memoir category sells better than Fiction. Agents know this, Editors know this, Publishers know this. Authors learn this... Blame it on reality TV shows which give the illusion (though they're scripted) that 'true stories' are somehow more appealing than fiction." (That said, it should be conceded that Misha Defonseca's phony Holocaust survival story was published by an indie press.)
I don't know about where you live, New York publishers, but you can hire a private investigator in Portland for about $600 bucks. Then you could advance your author $99,400 and call it good.