Conference scams are the latest tools for internet criminals targeting intellectuals. Three victims, including a professor of a university and a retired corporate professional, have already been duped, said the state Cyber Police who had received the three complains one after the other.
The professor (names withheld on request) had complained that he had received an e-mail inviting him to take part in an international conference in London on “Clean Energy and Environment Change”. The mail, with elaborate details about the website of the organiser and links to various other websites, had stated that the conference would be held from May 3 and promised to reimburse air tickets and the booking amount for hotel in the heart of the city. “The scamsters first asked the victim to send his research paper and a reply came immediately stating the paper had been accepted.
Later, they asked for credit of Rs 2.36 lakh towards the air ticket and 560 pounds for advance booking of the hotel. They even created a fake website of a non-existing hotel. Ignorant of the scam, the victim credited the amount only to later find all the websites suspended,” a senior police official said.Within a fortnight after this, a retired bureaucrat turned up at the cyber police station with a similar complaint. This time, the phishing mail had a different topic for the conference. The bureaucrat said he got inkling of the scam only after searching for the hotel on Google and also through a relative settled in London.
“It seems the scamsters choose specific as well as non-specific topics to attract their victims. After receiving the paper for presentation, they stated that the London Olympics was the reason for immediate advance booking of the hotel. They sent an account number as that of the hotel along with the hotel’s website. When that didn’t work, they sent me an ICICI bank account number and asked me to credit 594 pounds. After depositing the amount I received a receipt on June 19. Since then the websites’ services have been suspended and I came to know that no such hotel exists in London,’’ he said. The Cyber Police said that a third complainant from Bengaluru had lost Rs 1.93 lakh. This time too the conference was supposed to be in London, but with the topic “Urban Environment Pollution and Weather Management”.