ICCECC ( Intl Conference on Clean Energy and Climate Change)

You will not believe what I will say now . I am a TA and RA in Cairo University /Egypt . I received an invitation for a conference from a professor . I submitted my paper then after 2 days I received the reply " accepted". No respected conference sends you a reply after 2 days this should be alarming . Now the conference chair told me that since I am from Egypt , then I can apply for a travel grant ( visa + air tickets for free ), I applied and got the reply after 1 day ! it is approved but to get the grant you have to book at a certain hotel , it called palace garaden hotel in london , the new thing here is that he gave an email address to book through it was [email protected] , it doesn't look to seem like a spam till now , then I booked and made the transaction through western union , after I emailed him the detlails , he told me that I have to pay a mandatory refundable security fund ( MRSD) to make sure that I will come to the conference since they have some people from African the past year who took the visa and didn't show up ! I also paid that and sent it , he then kept giving me sedation ! he told me that their booking agent has already reserved my seat in the plane and he is making the needed in Cairo . I then became suspicious when he told that the visa is costing them 500 GBP ! and he will make a schedule for the visa in the embassy for me ! since I know the UK embassy don't do any interviews and the whole process is made through a company that charges you less than 80 GBP. After that he told me that I have to pay another 500 GBP ( great Britain pound) as health insurance and the health insurance and the MRSD will be refunded when I arrive in the hotel ! I told him that I will not any more penny and I will get my money back and he told it was ok will make the refund , this was a month ago ! since then I can't get my money nor I can get the money of the hotel reservation , I sent the hotel itself and told them but got no reply too !


the conference is called work group on climate change WGCC
Be ware people
http://masrwaaloma.wordpress.com/2011/1 ... cecc-2012/

also the hotel url is http://palacegardenhotel.co.uk/

I'm sorry to hear you were scammed. Unfortunately, what I'm going to say now is probably not going to make things any better.

You will not get your money back. It is gone forever. Scammers use Western Union because they can pick up the cash and walk away, and there is no way to get it back.

[email protected]

This is a free email address. The scammers simply signed up for a free dialup account to get the free email addresses. They undoubtedly signed up using fake names etc.
From the website:uko2.co.uk:

uko2 UK ISP provide a whole suite of FREE services with every free dialup account. Our standard free dialup account comes with all of the following brilliant features:

Unlimited free email addresses
Unlimited free email aliases

Then we have the website, another fake. This domain was registered in August, and for 2 years, which is the minimum allowable registration for a co.uk website. Again, the registration details lead nowhere. If there is a real palace garden hotel (I can't research that right now), it is not connected to the website or the email address. As you can see in red, the domain registration has already been suspended, undoubtedly for fraud.

Domain name:
palacegardenhotel.co.uk

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 02-Aug-2011
Renewal date: 02-Aug-2013
Last updated: 29-Oct-2011

Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
*** This registration has been SUSPENDED. ***

What all this means is that the whole conference is fake, invented only to steal money from you and others in the same industry. The scammers may promise to refund money, but they are only doing that because they are trying to think of a way to steal even more money from you!

The best thing you can do right now is cut off all contact with the scammers. You can certainly report the crime to the authorities, but because the scammers are in another country, there is little they will be able to do except document it.

Do not respond any more to the scammers, no matter what they say or promise. They are lying thieves, and they will say or do whatever is required to take even more of your money.