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Over the past two issues we’ve been looking at types of online event registration scams and how to spot fraudulent registrations in your database. Now that you can easily identify when a scammer has targeted your event, what should you do about it?

If you missed last month’s article or would like to review it, go to:

http://www.eply.com/event_resources/online_registration_articles/fraud.html

A couple of years ago, while planning an international conference in the Caribbean, I was bombarded daily with fraudulent registrations from all over the world, specifically from Africa.

I had to pay close attention to registrations from Nigeria since we were actually expecting delegates from Nigeria. I had to verify each registration so that I wasn’t sending Visa letters to scammers.

 Sometimes it was clear who the scammers were once we made contact with them. They would refuse to send us money for the conference (most chose to pay by cheque because they only wanted Visa Letters) and claimed that they needed a letter of invitation in order to get the money from their organization to attend.

These responses tipped me off immediately.

Here is how to handle a fraudulent registration:

1. Refund the payment immediately if it’s by credit card. This will prevent you from getting hit with a chargeback as it is most likely a stolen credit card.
    
2. NEVER send a cheque to refund a credit card payment because if it’s a stolen credit card, then the perpetrator gets the money and you end up paying the credit card company when the card is reported stolen.
    
3. You may want to consider reporting the fraudulent registrant to your local or national Internet Crime Centre.
   
   US – http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
   Canada – https://www.recol.ca/intro.aspx?lang=en
    
4. Be sure to let everyone you work with know about the fraudulent registration, how to spot them, and what to do if they spot one incase there are others.
    
5. Instead of ignoring the registration, mark the registration as deleted. If you have a maximum number of spots for your event, you don’t want fraudulent registrations taking up spots.
    
6. NEVER send letters of invitation or other documents to registrants unless you’ve verified their legitimacy. If you have already sent these documents and realize the request was a scam, alert the proper authorities immediately.

Be proactive!

Deter scammers from even registering for your event. Depending on your expected audience, you may have less of a chance of being scammed if your event is local, as it is quite unlikely that someone from Russia is going to register for a Seattle Business Professionals Conference. However, scammers are found in every country, so here are some ways to make your event unattractive to scammers:

• Limit the list of countries in your drop down menu to only those you expect to attend your conference.
   
• Ask registrants to enter a code that only they would know or have access to in order to complete their registration. For instance, the code could be emailed out to those invited to register. If a potential registrant needs the code, they can ask for it via email. Then, you can verify their email first, before they even have a chance to register. Keep in mind that although this helps prevent scammers, it may complicate the registration process and deter people from completing the registration.
   
• Ask for a unique piece of information such as a member number that only legitimate registrants would know.
   
• Similarly, you could have the link to the registration on a secure page of your website that is only accessible by username/password.
   
• Be sure to ask for the CCV number if you are collecting credit card information.
   
• Add text to your form that states credit card refunds can only be made back to the original credit card or that international registrants will be verified by phone.

If you follow the advice we have offered in our last three articles, you should be able to avoid being a target of a registration scam. In many cases online registration will allow you to deal with a potential scam more efficiently than a paper based registration system.

Be sure to check out next month’s newsletter when we explain what an AVS is (Address Verification System) and how should it be used with event registrations.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or comments about this article.

Written by Katie Laughlin

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