Cyber con-artists purporting to represent European Commission attempted to scam local NGO

Dear Editor,

As President of the National Amerindian Deve-lopment Foundation (NADF) I was pleased to find an email dated March 13, 2009 purportedly coming from Mr Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Develop-ment and Humanitarian Aid, inviting the organisation to attend a conference organized by the European Commission in London starting March 30 and concluding on April 30, 2009. My instinct first questioned the lengthy conference period and standard of English, but nevertheless I began communicating with the senders of the invitation. I was informed that a team of three was one of the qualifying factors, so I mobilized the team and downloaded the application forms. Due to my lengthy exchange of letters with the supposed conference organizers I have been able to secure names, addresses, and locations for sending payments, etc. I became suspicious of their modus operandi and subsequently called the European Delegation here, and was advised to send them an email regarding my suspicions, I also made contact with the British High Commission in Georgetown, who advised they could not do anything about this. The European Delegation has not yet responded to my email.

In my opinion this is something very serious and needs the attention of the Europeans and the British. I am not satisfied to hear that nothing can be done about it when we have ‘cyber cops’ who could break a group which tries to scam organisations using credible organisations such as the EU.

The EU and the British have the technology to break this scam organisation and they should do it. I hope someone see the seriousness in this and makes a move.

Yours faithfully
Ashton Simon