Scam Alert: Conference Scams

COVID-19 brought about a lot of interruptions to what used to be everyday activities, including public gatherings. In the wake of the aftermath of the pandemic, ‘normalcy’ as the world knew it is being restored. This includes events such as conventions and conferences.

Seeing as the general public was clamouring for the world to open back up, scammers and cyber criminals began taking advantage of unsuspecting consumers by organising predatory events as soon as it was safe enough to do so. A consumer contacted us to verify the legitimacy of one of such conferences - The European Conference on Engineering and Technology (ECETECH). We therefore carried out an investigation and reported the results.

What is ECETECH?

According to ecetech.org, the European Conference on Engineering and Technology will hold its first conference in July of 2022 at St. Michael Hotel in Paris. It is meant to “bring together leading researchers, research scholars, and academic scientists to share their research and experiences about all aspects of technology, innovations, and engineering”.

Red Flags

a. Conference Topics and Speakers

Conferences typically cover very specific topics, with subject-matter experts duly lined up to speak on said topics. The ECETECH conference however covers a rather broad range of topics not specific to any field. There are also no speakers listed for any topics or areas of specialisation.

ScamAdviser also noted that ‘Invited Speakers’ will have to pay a ‘Registration Fee’ in order to attend the event. This is rather suspicious as invited keynote speakers are typically paid to make presentations at conferences, and registration fees reserved for other attendees or others who themselves requested to speak. Registration fees range from €650 - 2,500 for Invited Speakers; nothing is said about registration for other attendees.

For such a technically-inclined event, it is also suspicious that the ECETECH Conference claims to make provision for ‘spouses and family members’ of the speakers to attend, even doing as much providing flight tickets, accommodation and feeding for said guests. One wonders what purpose these family members would serve at the conference to warrant such treatment.

The link to the Conference’s resource page for the speakers also resulted in a 404 error.

b. Venue and Accommodation

St, Michael Hotel in Paris is listed on the ECETECH website as both the venue for the event and accommodation quarters for invited guests/speakers.

It was interesting that a simple Google search revealed the pictures of the rooms purportedly reserved for accommodation were generic photos from other hotels in Paris and elsewhere. Particularly, the conference room advertised on the website is actually a photo of the [one of the]conference room(s) at a Nigerian hotel; Eko Hotels and Suites.

A look at what is supposed to be the hotel’s official website as shown on the ECETECH page revealed it to actually be non-existent. The source code from the hotel website appears to have been taken from another hotel’s website - The Millesime Hotel. The details are evident in the footer of St. Michael Hotel's website and a Google search reveals the real hotel website: www.millesimehotel.com.

St. Michael Hotel website as shown on the ECETECH page

The Millesime Hotel

St. Michael Hotel could also not be found on booking.com, and the address - 40 Rue La Bruyere, Paris, France - did not show any indications of a hotel when searched on Google street maps.

c. Conference Organisers

The listed organiser - MCB Organisers - just like St Michael Hotel was found to be non-existent. In the same vein, their website as listed on the ECETECH page is but a replica of Conference Solutions Inc. (www.conferencesolutionsinc.com), logo and all.

d. Official Sponsors

There are four companies listed as the official sponsors of the ECETECH Conference: Thomas Kutt Telecom, TomWang Telecom, Dalarist International GmbH, and David Cheng Engineering Group LLC.

• For a company claiming to carry out telecommunications activities in Switzerland, THOMAS KUTT TELCOM was not found on any listings of Switzerland companies.

• There was no information to be found on the TOM WANG website as it is currently inactive with no DNS information found. Though the ECETECH website claims TomWang Telecom is a subsidiary of Renew Holdings Plc registered in Leeds, England; there was no confirmation of such an acquisition/subsidiary within Renew Holdings’ records.

• Dalarist International GmbH also had similar issues to TomWang Telecom in terms of having an inactive domain name/website. No information (credible or otherwise) could be found to corroborate Dalarist’s claim of being a ”global leader in generic and biosimilar medicines” according to the ECETECH website.

• Following the path of his co-sponsors, the DAVID CHENG ENGINEERING GROUP LLC also had no information available anywhere on the web to back up any of its top tier claims.

While the ECETECH domain itself is all of four (4) months old, perhaps the most questionable characteristic of all the sponsors is that no information could be found on them except in relation to what is on the ECETECH website. ScamAdviser also found it strange that all four (4) domains were registered from periods ranging 7 months to 2 years. This is not excluding the listed organiser - MCB Organisers - whose domain has only been existing for two (2) months. In short, these are very young companies.

Conclusion

In light of such damning clues on what is supposed to be a world-class event, we advise potential visitors to exercise extreme caution when dealing with anything concerning the ECETECH conference, and other such events with similar characteristics as it/they will most likely be a scam.