A post from a prominent professor caught my eye. “Is this what success looks like?” He’d been listed as the keynote speaker—at a conference he’d never heard of and had never agreed to speak at. (Note: I won’t name the event to avoid rewarding the website with free publicity.)
I decided to investigate. What kind of a scam was this one?
I reached out to some of the other speakers and quickly got confirmation that they too had no idea they were “scheduled to speak”.
How could they not know?
Well, not one of the posted speaker images had text that would be caught by tools like Google Alerts or an outbound link that would alert a conscientious webmaster. (“What is this link?”) Each speaker was represented by an image that included their headshot, name, company name and title.
The lack of links overall was one of the most visible signs of a scam. There were no outbound links to the:
- Venue
- Sponsors
- Speakers, or
- Organizing committee
Outbound links can alert people and companies that they are being cited. None of the speakers listed had links to LinkedIn or a website. The event location link leads to another page on the website about non-specified accommodations… as in, no specific hotel listed, making it impossible to check whether an event has been booked there.
None of the supposed sponsors had links to their websites. Huge red flag. Every legitimate event sponsor wants links to their site. The sponsors were also an odd mix of recognizable brand name companies. I see everything from American Airlines, Boeing, Butterball and Johnson & Johnson to Kroger and Subway for an event supposedly about small business. Or startups. Or is it marketing?
The conference’s very generic name changes when it comes to the abstract submission page and the organizing committee page. Another red flag.
The organizing committee page had no headshots, no links, no titles, no company affiliations… just row upon row of generic, “American-sounding” names. This might mean the scam is targeting an international crowd. Much of the spelling was British English rather than American.
What were they actually after?
According to the event instructions, applicants must submit a 200-word abstract followed by a paper of up to 15 PAGES, which offers a glimpse into one of the possible purposes of this scam: stealing your content.
These kinds of websites are also sometimes set up to harvest leads, collecting information that can then be sold to marketers or used for spammy outreach. The scam event could be capturing identity data from potential speakers or, in a follow-up play, soliciting payment to speak.
The site could also be repurposed later, promising something else entirely, coasting on backlinks from speakers who believed they’d been accepted to a legitimate event and linked back to it in their own promotion.
Notably, the event itself does not sell tickets. Entry is free, which removes a layer of scrutiny. This also makes it easier to cancel after harvesting information from prospective speakers.
A quick gut check for speakers
In addition to these red flags, this site also had many of the usual hallmarks of a scam event. We usually coach speakers to look for:
- Topics that are too general
- Too much emphasis on the benefits of speaking at the event
- Speaker images that appear to have been scraped directly from LinkedIn profiles without permission
- Mismatched, AI-generated or otherwise “off” images
- Overuse of stock images, since most events will have their own photography
When you’re looking for speaking opportunities, any of these red flags should be enough to make you walk away.
As someone who works to get more women and other underrepresented speakers on stage, there was one aspect of this scam event that particularly irked me. Out of the eight featured speakers, only one was a woman. Of the 25 already selected speakers, there were only five women speakers. It seems like even the scammers can’t assemble a gender-balanced speaker slate!
For a broader look at what makes a speaking opportunity a scam versus a legitimate (if imperfect) event, check out our earlier piece on the fake conference scam and how to evaluate event business models.
This isn’t the first time we’ve covered a fake conference scam and other predatory speaking opportunities. Check out the warning signs of that “perfect” speaking engagement.
Add Comment