Similar to the World Cup scam (aimed at sports fans), this one comes as an invitation for businessmen, lecturers, philanthropists, or even priests. Scammers find their profiles on the Internet and master craft an invitation, tailored to the victim’s name and activity.

The recipient of the letter is invited to be the keynote speaker at an event/ conference held in a foreign country, for which plane tickets, meals and local transport are provided. The only thing that the invitee has to take care of is the hotel, which has to be pre-paid - the organizers want to make sure the guest won’t be a “no-show”.

With plane tickets and meals provided, several guests are fine with paying for their hotel rooms – and this is where the scam comes – as the hotel suggested by the organizers, supposedly close to the conference center, is a fake.

The guest opens the fake hotel link that scammers create using beautiful stock photos and provide their credit card numbers. They pay for the hotel but they will never receive the plane tickets, for the mythical conference.

How to avoid: if you receive an invitation to a conference that you have not previously heard about, check with other people working in the same field. Either no one will have heard of it, which proves it is a scam, or they will all have received the same invitation, which also proves it is a scam!