"BARCELONA DANCE AWARD 2009"

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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:30 am

I came across a spam today sent to a scambaiting account which seems to be from the same guys as in this
old thread from January.

A dancing competition is not your typical lad format, though I can see a lot of parallels to fake conference scams, like the mention of a fee and of hotel reservations, the use of free websites, webmail addresses and mobile numbers.

It seems odd that some guys from Italy would organize an event in Spain, not Italy. Likewise, a few years earlier there were event invitations for an event in Prague linked to the same people. I don't see any Spanish or Czech pages that mention the supposed events. Very weird.

Unusually, these guys seem to have been around for a number of years (see this archive view), even sticking with the same cellphone ((0039) 335 6141846
) for a number of years, which is un-laddish.

Has anyone done any research on these guys or tried to bait them?

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:21 am

I've some interesting information and for the life of me I can't remember where. About some conference scams and if I remember right they are really con merchants and they will set up quite sophisticated arrangements and then disappear with the money. When they are found they seem to have legal loop holes - no refund policies etc all set stated on the web sites etc.
A bit tough to bait as they in essence not lying from a legal point of view.
Unethical but Crying or Very sad

There has been some other conference scams that are 419 scammers having a go and lots here sign up for those scams.

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:45 pm

Thanks, harrya!

If you can find anything concrete on these dance guys, I'd much appreciate what you can still dig up.

I wanted to put up a scam warning page about these guys but there were too many unladdish signals for me to be comfortable, such as the same guys announcing such events for something like six years. Also, considering how long they seem to have been around I saw now pre-2008 pages branding them as a scam.

I deal with fake conference scams on a regular basis, as I get quite a few reports via www.scamomatic.com, but this one is a bit more elaborate then typical fake conference scams.

Joe

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 11:53 pm

Interesting spelling mistake here:

Quote:

BARCELONA DANCE AWARD- from 9th to 13th April 2009 in Barcelona (SPAIN) and from 18th to 22nd June 2009 in Italya in the end of june in Paris (June)

"Italya" is the Turkish spelling of Italy, whereas the Italian name is "Italia".

What Italian would misspell the name of his country that way?

Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 11:19 am

^^^I baited these guys on a couple of occasions a while ago. They dropped me when my accommodation proposals got to Maria Carey proportions. I think the water bed filled with champagne(or some such modest request!) was the final straw that made them drop me. If I can find them, I will dig out the details of the bait and get back to you.

Quote:

We are a Cult. Org. with more than 50 dance groups for this Event in Spain

I think they hit the 'l' key instead of the 'n''. Laughing

The BARCELONA DANCE<insert year here> modality has been round for a while. They just change the year to keep it 'fresh'.

[Edited to add]Just a couple of snippets from their previous emails which made me smile. At the end, my sign offs weren't quite so polite. Very Happy