Is this conference real?

[Nancy]

I only got to know this lady through the internet, before long, she was sending me an invitation to attend a combined international conference on HIV/AIDS prevention and child abuse/labour in US and Africa.

I have submitted names of people I would like to attend this conference with and we have been sent the United Nations Emergency Travel Document to fill and email/fax back to the organizing secretary on the following email address: Giving our details as in our passports.

[email protected]

How do I verify that this is true?

[ChrisSmith]

Without seeing the emails, receiving any other details from you and just purely from the email address, I would be 99.9999999% certain that the above is a scam.
That is a mail.com address. No proper conference organiser would use it.

[Scam Patroller]

If you google the whole [email protected] email address, you will see it listed on this site as belonging to a Nigerian 419 fraudster:

http://www.joewein.net/dl/bl/from-bl.txt

As Chris stated, please note that the consultant.com domain used in the email address, is a free email address domain provided by www.mail.com which scammers regularly use.

[Emma Jones]

Hi Nancy, and welcome to ScamWarners.

It is very unusual in my experience for a conference organiser to take on the travel arrangements for delegates. Usually, delegates have to make their own arrangements for getting to the conference, and for any necessary Visa or travel permit that may be needed. I expect the "organiser" will ask for fees for the travel documents and visas, if they have not already.

Any international Aids conference will also have been advertised widely among the groups that work in this field, and on the internet, and probably on a list like this: http://www.conferencealerts.com/aids.htm I'm willing to bet that the conference you have been invited to is not on this list and cannot be found using an internet search engine like Google. It is difficult, I know, to tell the legitimate from the scams sometimes, and hard to understand how scammers could exploit Aids, but trust me, they have before and will again. They truly are scum.

If you want definite confirmation, please do post a couple of the emails you have received, but I am pretty sure I know already that this is an advance fee fraud. My advice would be to drop all communication immediately, and prepare for a deluge of other scams and spam into your email address - changing it would help prevent that.

[Jack.Clements]

Nancy, you've gotten some excellent advice here - I am in complete agreement, it's a scam. Either the scammer you are currently in communication with or one of his/her associates will be hitting you up for some sort of fee in the near future.

You mentioned that you had submitted the names of people you'd like to attend the "conference" with. Do you know if the scammer has contacted them yet? I'd suggest that you let them know what's going on - the scammer will be trying to get money out of them as well if he/she has contact information.

[GomerPyle]

Hi Nancy - I didn't hear back from you so I already posted it up as an example to warn others.

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=246

It's pretty nasty to wrap up a scam with a charitable cause, and anyone setting up a visit to a conference like this, is going to get into problems with their colleagues, when they are totally innocent.

There are so many cruel sides to this scam I'd class it as beyond repugnant.

[Anna Smith]

Hello Nancy, very good you posted here. Feel free to post some of the emails so we can have a closer look. It sure does smell like a scam to me.

The best advice I can give you is to be upfront with the people involved. If you have approached people for this conference, please advise them and educate them of this scam. Drop all communication with the scammer. They may send some more emails and if you have provided them with your telephone number they may try to call you a couple of times. This should end after a while, simply ignore them.

Be advised that scammers share email addresses of people that have responded. You may receive more emails from scammers, with different types of scams. I would like to advise you to browse around this forum and get familair with different types of scams and how to recognize them. Stay safe!

[Bubbles]

Nany,

I, as a baiter, was working one of these Conference Scams [Global Youth Conference (GYC)]. The Advanced Fee Fraud angle was to try to get me to send Hotel Reservation fees by Western Union.

The scammer also offered to provide me with an expedited visa through the United Nations. Fee payable by... you guessed it, Western Union.

Western Union is the prefered method of payment by scammers because they can pick up the funds any place in the world AND there is no paper trail for law enforcement to follow.

[John Nord]

^^^^^^ Yup scam --- no question whatsoever.

I have baited the global youth conference scammers as well. They asked me for hotels fee via by e-mail number 3. There was a similar scam last year for a conference supposedly based in California. The angle was to ask the victim for a "visa fee" payable only by Western Union. Now, the funny part, the "character" I was using to bait them said she lived in Ohio. Now when I demanded to know why an American needed a visa to go to a conference in California, they started cursing at me and typing in caps

Scammers often use "forms" ---- the scripts for the first few e-mails may seem excellent, with nice fonts, colors, picutres etc. and they even use perfect English in the scripts. Don't fall for it.