In June 2010, I posted a blog about an apparent speaker scam.  A friend of Public Words received an invitation to speak at a prestigious university in the UK.  There were a number of inconsistencies and oddities with the email and we all guessed that it was a scam.  Since then I have received numerous updates from -- especially -- religious folks being invited to speak at purported religious conferences in the UK.  Different venues, different pastors doing the inviting, but it all adds up, again, to scam.  Don't send out any information in response!  Especially don't send any financial information -- bank account numbers and the like. 

I get weekly inquiries, sometimes several a week, so this scam is still very active. 

Here's the original posting.  Click on the link to see the dozens of comments of people who have been approached.  And don't be fooled!

The original post from June 2010:

A good friend of ours at Public Words, a successful public speaker, recently received a speaking inquiry from a prestigious university in the United Kingdom.  The request came via email, and there were a number of indications that it wasn’t on the level.  The email address was a Gmail account, not the university’s email.  The sender purported to be a professor at the school, but there was no record of such a professor in the university’s online database.  Of course, he might have been newly appointed, but his command of the English language was so bad that our friend was immediately suspicious. 

On further investigation, there was no mention of the conference our friend was supposed to speak at on the university’s website.  In addition, there was an unusual request to “get a work permit” from the “British embassy” (via another Gmail account).

All signs seemed to point to fraud.  And, in addition, the amount of money offered for speaking was unusually large – the final straw. 

My question to everyone is:  have you run across anything similar?  What’s the point – would the scammer have asked for bank information at a later stage if our friend had continued?  If you’ve run across speaker scams like this, please let me know.

Click here to see the commentary. 

Comments

[Vendita Giubotti Belstaff]

Very, very nicely done!

[Jacqueline McEwan]

Recently, I received the folVictory Outreach Church
Greenforge Way
Springvale Ind Estate
United Kingdom
NP44 3UZ
http://www.victorychurch.co.uk/
Host Pastor:Pastor Richard Taylor
Email:victorychurchinquiry@gmail.com
Tel Phone: + 44 7045750464

Grace and Peace unto you Rev. Dr. Jacqueline McEwan,

We are Pastor Richard Taylor of the Victory Outreach Church London
,United Kingdom.We are writing to invite you to be our guest speaker
at this year Symphony of Praise – Celebration of Victory Conference 2011. After
reading through your profile at http://www.jrmcewan-ministries.com/, The
lord has direct us to email you for this assignment .All travel
arrangements,speaking fee and accommodation will be taken care of as
soon as you honor this invitation.

Venue
Spurgeon Hall (Inside Church Premises)
Greenforge Way
Springvale Ind Estate
United Kingdom
NP44 3UZ
Date : 5th to 7th of December 2011
Topic:The Effect Of Compromising God"s Standard

We will send you all binding documents including a Letter of
Invitation and Contract Agreement as soon as you honor our invitation.
Email any questions you may have.

We await your earliest response.

Remain Blessed

Pastor Richard Taylor
Senior Pastor
Victory Outreach Church
Tel Phone: + 44 7045750464
lowing e-mail invitation:

I did not response after going to the website and located the contact information for the church and found that it differed. The church's e-mail address was not a gmail and the telephone number was not the same. Thank you for your information.

[Tolieth Marks]

We just got the same thing in our email. For the end of this month. Praise God we didn’t follow through on that.

[Kenneth Cain]

I have also received the same email, however the language has been cleaned up a bit to be grammatically correct. It just didn't register in my spirit so I did some checking. Thank you for your information.