A failed payment attempt is not necessarily a cause for concern. However, the fact that the credit card holder was based in the Philippines rather than Nigeria, and was not even a member of the association, certainly was. When asked, the organization's members claimed that "Mike Smith," the card's owner, had supposedly been "introduced" to them to handle the payment.
Conference registration with stolen or invalid credit cards
It is not uncommon for supposed participants to attempt to register using a credit card that has been stolen or is no longer valid.
This can become expensive for you as an organizer. With stolen credit cards, you must always be prepared for the legitimate cardholder to initiate a chargeback process, thereby canceling the booking. The amount is then credited back to their account. You incur additional costs, as the payment recipient usually bears the fees associated with chargebacks.
This becomes a problem, for example, if a participant cancels their booking a few days after registering and asks you about the possibility of charging the payment to a different credit card. This unusual request is then justified by the loss of the previously used credit card or a change of bank.
In such cases, be sure to contact your bank to verify the details before fulfilling the participant's request. If the originally used credit card was indeed stolen, the legitimate holder will initiate a chargeback as soon as they see their statement. Meanwhile, the scammer will be happy to have received the credit.
Scammers also frequently attempt to bypass the standard registration procedure that applies to all participants. The Nigerian association also requested to pay the registration fee by credit card, even though this was not possible at that time.
Just because the question of payment methods is on the table, you should never assume that the money will actually reach you in the end. If you already have doubts about the credibility of the individuals, it is better to refer them to the offered payment methods and make it clear that exceptions are not an option.
Be cautious when issuing invitations
In our client's case, the members of the Nigerian association requested the issuance of invitation letters.
Depending on their country of origin, participants from abroad may require a visa to enter the country and attend a conference. If you receive a request to issue such an invitation, you should first verify whether a visa is actually required for entry. The Federal Foreign Office has created an overview of visa requirements for this purpose.
The participant then applies for the visa themselves at the responsible German diplomatic mission.
There, it is checked, among other things, whether the visitor is financially secure for the duration of their stay. If they are unable to cover all incurred costs (accommodation, medical care, departure, etc.) themselves, the organizer can assume all costs with a so-called formal obligation (Verpflichtungserklärung) in accordance with §§ 66–68 of the Residence Act.
Unfortunately, it frequently happens that people requesting an invitation have no intention of attending your conference at all, but are simply looking for a way to enter Germany.
It is okay to express doubt
Since a total of 16 members of the association—strangely including children—wanted to attend the conference, the organizer decided to first research the organization.
In principle, we advise against ever issuing invitations, and especially formal obligations, prematurely, and instead recommend investigating the case more thoroughly.
However, rejecting all requests across the board is not the right way to protect yourself from potential scammers. With such an approach, you simultaneously exclude all individuals without fraudulent intent from the event. Knowledge shared at international conferences should not be accessible only to participants from countries that do not require a visa.
While fraudulent intentions were once quite easy to spot, for example because the provided phone number did not exist or emails remained unanswered, resourceful scammers now make it quite difficult for organizers.
Even when searching for the Nigerian organization, a Facebook page with more than 100 fans and several entries with photos was quickly found, which initially dispelled some doubts. However, these returned at the latest upon closer inspection of the association's website, where almost all menu items led to the same subpage consisting only of placeholder text.
If an association is established, its name will appear in other places online. Therefore, use appropriate tools to check whether backlinks exist, meaning whether links from other websites lead to the page.
No external links to the Nigerian website could be found—an indication that the page is either very new, the organization is barely active, or it does not exist at all. At the very least, one should assume that a cultural association whose website has existed for more than two years would have been linked by other organizations in the meantime.
To get a clearer picture, the organizer went a step further and contacted, among others, the German Embassy in Nigeria. However, none of the contacted agencies knew of the association in question.
Because it was still not definitively clear whether it was a real organization, the organizer requested a letter of motivation in which the interested parties explain why they want to attend the conference, which was to be used as a basis for the invitation letters. The members of the association never provided the letter.
Instead, after several failed attempts, the registration fees arrived in the organizer's account. Since it was now assumed that they were not scammers, invitation letters—without a formal obligation—were issued.
If there are signs that invited individuals intend to obtain a visa fraudulently, you should at the latest after sending the invitation letters inform the relevant diplomatic mission about it. This keeps you as an organizer on the safe side and you do not have to fear legal consequences. The authority can thus rule out that you are intentionally trying to smuggle people into Germany.
The members of the organization then actually appeared at the German Embassy in Lagos. However, four people were missing—including the only two who are demonstrably active as university lecturers. It was suspected that these might be trust-building straw men who know nothing about the conference. After the personal presentation of the individuals present, the embassy staff also shared the organizer's concerns, which is why the visas were not granted.
The difficult search for the truth
That leaves the question of why the money arrived after all. Shouldn't that have cleared up any remaining doubts?
In reality, the situation here is very unclear.
It is possible that the association actually exists and there is simply a misunderstanding. For instance, the members might have assumed that the conference, which focused on music education among other things, was an artistic rather than a scientific event. Even then, it makes sense that the visas were not granted. Otherwise, the association's funds would have been spent on an event that did not meet the members' expectations.
Nevertheless, it is also possible that human smugglers are involved. They usually demand several thousand euros from their "clients" in advance, meaning there would still be enough profit left over even after paying for flights and conference fees.
The fraud attempts we have encountered so far have largely originated from Africa. However, it would be wrong to assume that all registrations from Africa should automatically be considered fraudulent. Likewise, scammers are not found exclusively there. As an organizer, you should therefore regardless of the origin of the registration look for signs that someone might be acting with fraudulent intent.
