Scams

Scam conference invites: a tale of several cities

An invite to a conference in California proves to be a scam, and a very similar spam claims the very same conference is taking place in New York in March.

An invite to a conference in California proves to be a scam, and a very similar spam claims the very same conference is taking place in New York in March.

It’s not been a good week for spam, in my mailbox at any rate. Mostly, just half-hearted lottery scams like this:

Does anyone ever fall for scams this feeble? Well, just in case, I’ve warned all my email accounts that while I’m not an expert on legal matters, I’m pretty sure that email can’t win lotteries and they certainly shouldn’t be sending my money to pay registration fees, taxes, bribes, or whatever other excuse the scammer makes for taking money in advance. (It’s not called Advance Fee Fraud for nothing.)

I’m far more impressed by the little beauty below. Who wouldn’t be impressed by a conference that managed to get the famous Angelina Ballerina to organize it? Fortunately, Wikipedia told me that Angelina is a fictional dancing mouse, so I escaped being scammed by a whisker. But I avoided making a faux pas in the pas seul, so to squeak. Okay, I’ll stop now and let you read this gem:

There were one or two other scam indicators of course:

  • The fact that a little googling found a very similar spam claiming that the very same conference was taking place in New York in March. (Don’t be too upset if it turns out that you live in one of the few American cities where it isn’t taking place. Though in this instance, it appears they forgot to mention which city in California was the chosen site.)
  • Then there’s the fact that Angelina also goes by the name Osmar Buzinhani, the proud (apparent) possessor of a gov.br email address. Is there no end to this mouse’s versatility?
  • No web site, no contact details apart from a free AIM address.
  • And the suggestion that the conference is responsible for organizing visa and travel assistance: this is a standard ploy for fake conferences, as a precursor to demands for an application processing fee (or something similar)

If you get something like this, don’t let your natural concerns over human rights issues and the fragile economy cloud your judgment. Not that these are the only topics used as a hook to draw you into the scam: variations on the conference theme include human trafficking, child abuse, racism, war-affected children and so on. They also misuse the names of entirely legitimate organizations such as the International Economic Development Council, UNESCO, and the UN, in order to target other NGOs and ‘people of conscience’.

Still, I must admit, Ms Ballerina’s English isn’t bad at all, for a Brazilian mouse.  I bet she leads the authorities a merry dance. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow

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