"What do you mean the money's gone!?!"

The event industry is a truly great, exciting and friendly place to work.  It's also stressful, time sensitive and requires perfect planning. 

Businesses could learn a lot from many experienced event organisers about; team building, customer service, negotiation, bidding, project management, multiple supplier handling, leadership, marketing, advertising, return on investment, budget controls and so on.  

However, the success of many events also relies on a backbone of those involved being able to build trust, relationships and professionalism simply because of the nature of the environment.

And it's because of this backbone, the fraudsters are moving in to this space as more reports are surfacing because event organisers are starting to stand up and let others know there are scammers taking advantage and that it isn't the fault of the event organiser over looking small details. 

The scammers are taking advantage and using the backbone against the industry!

Here are some of the frauds I've heard:

1) A large UK law firm decided to run an event in India.  They did their research and found a local event organiser to partner with.  They did their due diligence. They flew to meet the organiser at a venue, met, discussed, flew home.  They did this several times as the event was to be a flagship event. Finally they agreed figures, signed a contract and handed over £50,000 as a deposit to kick start booking everything.  That was the last time they saw the money!  The organiser was a con artist who was playing the long game pretending to be an organiser.  He had everything perfectly covered and seemingly credible and plausible. The law firm lost the cash. All the signs were there because experienced organisers merely pass liability for booking onto the client and won't take this upon themselves incase the client decides not to go ahead and leaves them with the cancellation charge.  However, there are also a few innocent event organisers who do operate this way - take a deposit and pay the deposits on behalf of the clients especially if there is an issue involving currency, so I could see how it could be easy to overlook the alarm bells which allows for this type of con, which typically preys on international clients reaching out to the local area.

2) AEO in the UK have issued a statement warning that a number of their members' clients are falling prey to 'directory service' scammers.  It seems customers exhibiting at exhibitions are being targeted by scammers claiming they are working with the exhibition, using the exhibition's branding and event details to appear genuine.  The scammers contact those who've booked a stand at the event, getting the exhibitors to sign up to a directory service which is 3 years, non-retractable agreements and in some cases for significant amounts of money.  Unfortunately, the scammers here rely on the Event Organiser trusting anything that has the exhibitors branding to be genuine communication and so will sometimes agree to or sign forms before reading the small print assuming that it is a genuine offer instead of doing the normal, 'did you send this out' and 'are they really your partner' check with the exhibition office first.  This is also the same base method used by Hotel Poachers and Room Blockers too.

3) There is also an increase in the Cyber crime of 'whaling'.  This is phishing on steroids and it relies on the victim attending an event.  This is highly targeted stuff as it relies on someone somewhere naming names as to who is going to what event and when.  The scammers are looking for high worth individuals, and particularly like to favour bosses of medium sized organisations who are probably doing a speech and listed as being on the stage at the event, or have read somewhere about them attending as an exhibitor or being a member in the audience - but it's always around the event.  On the day of the event, or the evening before - depending on the information they've found, they send an email purporting to be the victim to their PA, Accounts or who ever they've identified as a 'link', saying that they've ran out of money and have met an important prospective client and need to wine and dine them so could some cash be transferred quickly.  Or they need to buy something at the event and need the cash transferred quickly to take advantage of show prices or the hotel bill was more expensive than they thought and need the cash transferred quickly.  The details given are so close that at first you would think it genuinely came from them and going to a genuine source, but with one small letter or number change, emails and accounts can look deceptively real.  Most victims are left out of pocket to the sum of £3,000 to £4,000.  However, at one cyber crime event I was attending, a CEO rather embarrassingly admitted that his firm had been victim to this: while he was away at an event, his PA sent him, (the scammers) £150,0000.  The shocking part was that while he reported it accordingly, he did admit that if it had been for one of the smaller sums like £3000, he would have written it off as bad experience and save himself the feeling of being embarrassed to admit that they'd been caught out!

4) The charge back or cheque to cash scam.  This has come in many guises in other industries but it's starting to make it's way in to the events industry in a number of ways: 

1. Thanks to the increase of registration apps, online payment, internet banking, card payments and registering for events online, one method is really starting to shine through using a stolen credit card to purchase tickets.  Why? because the fraudster then calls the event organiser and asks for a refund (sister / mother granny dog has died and can't attend excuse)- but not to charge it back to the card, but to another card, or to a bank account or asks for a cheque. Once done, the money is usually untraceable and it's the organiser who has to foot the loss and not the credit card.
2. The 'client' (read scammer in this case) says they'll pay by cheque and send the organiser a cheque accordingly or sends the cheque to the organisers bank direct. Depending on the bank, it normally takes 3 working days for 'business cheques' to clear and the scammer uses this time to call the organiser, explain they've over paid or there's been a change of circumstances and need to reduce budget - either way, they ask the organiser if they could 'send some or all of the money back' - ie do a bank transfer against the sum they can see 'registered on their account but still waiting for the cheque to clear'.  Of course the organiser obliges only to find that when the cheque is supposedly due to clear, it bounces. 
3. A little more sophisticated but involves a 2nd party being part of the con too.  Client (scammer A) calls and books the services of the organiser.  The client then says they would like a particular speaker or service and names them.  The organiser calls the speaker's agent or the service provider - who is actually Scammer B. The organiser is put through the mill 'negotiations', giving it all the feel of being 'genuine', including info that they have to pay for the speaker or service, 'upfront'.  Organiser calls the client to let them know. Client sends organiser a 'cheque' and is persuaded to send a cheque themselves to the other party on the pretence that both cheques clears at the same time.  Reality is the organiser being left out of pocket as Scammer A's cheque bounces and Scammer B cashes in the organiser's cheque for real cash.

While we can't stop fraud overnight, being vigilant is key as well as not being afraid to step up and share knowledge so scammers and their methods are highlighted quickly, helping to stamp this out.

Because of this, I know with iwantaspeaker.com we've stopped client's losing money to fraudsters, saving one client over £6,000 in air flights alone simply because we equipped the site with the facility of an escrow account - which means that until the money is in the neutral escrow account and the service has been performed, no one is going anywhere or being paid. Speakers don't leave home before funds are cleared into the escrow and organisers fee doesn't leave the account until the speaker has done whatever they agreed to do.  So, we haven't been good news for fraudsters and those wishing to get their hands on your money quickly.  And we look forward to continuing to do our part in helping to keep the event industry in it's wonderful, creative way of doing trusted business.

by Cindy-Michelle Waterfield

Can I sue a speaker?

Technically you can, but reality is that it's time consuming and could be cost prohibitive.

After talking to an insurance company about the usual yearly policy update of professional indemnity, I was horrified to learn that many speakers are actually leaving themselves open to not being professionally covered with an adequate insurance policy when they give a presentation.

This means that should they say something that you or a member of your audience then acts upon and it is advice that is detrimental, the speaker is not covered should they be sued.

What does this mean to you?  As an event organiser, you probably think that it's all down to the speaker and nothing to do with you.  But you'd be wrong.  If you have no proper contract in place with them, a clever legal bod could construe that they are a part of your team and as such, you would be libel for their mistake.

But we all rely on that one tough question of "proving the fact" as being the main reason why things don't go too much further as usually this is cost prohibitive.   However, what if it could be proved?  If it could be proved that what they said on your stage was the result of someone suffering from their bad advice, could your organisation be picking up the cost especially if you haven't done the basics?

And it's not just their advice that could be putting you at risk but also their behaviour and attitude.

Take the case of the speaker I mentioned in my earlier blog - the one who was chatting up members of the audience to go home with him.  Because there was no contract in place and the speaker was there as a 'promotion' for the event rather than being a paid professional, he was acting as one of the company's ambassadors - on their behalf.  And because he was there on their behalf, his behaviour of chatting up and making sexual references towards the guests could have landed the company in trouble should one of the guests taken offence and issued a formal complaint.  Had things taken a turn for the worse, the company could do very little towards the speaker as there was no contract, no clear definition of the working relationship and therefore trying to counter sue him would be again, cost prohibitive.

In today's audience experience, I recently listened to someone muttering behind me that they wanted to sue the organiser for having speakers who were not providing the content they were led to believe. Words like 'mis-reperesentation', 'taking money under false pretences' and 'false advertising' were being quietly bounced between her and her colleague.  Whether she will or not, I have no idea, but she did raise an interesting point: who was at fault - the speaker or the organiser?  And who would she sue for poor content / poor experience of the ticketed event - the speaker or the organiser?

After all, if  Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, can be sued after an audience member complained about his inappropriate comment towards someone else, then the floodgates could start to be opened for more actions to be brought against comedians, after dinner speakers, professional speakers and the friend of a friend of the CEO who's just graced your stage as a favour.....

Most professional speakers have professional indemnity insurance and issue you with terms and conditions.  If you are working with people who are not professional, by that I mean they have a day job and speak because of a passion, or it's related to their job role or they've been asked by the friend of the friend of the CEO, they probably won't have terms and conditions and it's also likely to follow that their insurance might not be adequately covering them when they give information from the stage.

Your process must include a means to guard yourself and your organisation against that 1 speaker in every 100 who will bring your organisation into disrepute - you know the one I mean that traditionally makes the event organiser being put into the position to take the fall and find a new job.

We think it's unfair and unjust and why there needs to be a standard way of working with speakers to guard against this and raise the level of professionalism - that's why we built iwantaspeaker.com.  If you have your own process already - fantastic and I'd love to hear more.  Please do send me an email or comment below and let me know how you've headed off potential issues before they arisen too.   Thank you and l look forward to reading them.

Can a Speaker Sue me even though they didn't perform? And what can I do about it?

The short answer is Yes, a speaker could sue you and win especially if you haven't kept a good enough account of what you needed them to do, even if they performed badly, you could lose.

Obviously the usual reason a speaker would take an Event Organiser to court would be for non payment of their invoice.

For an Event Organiser not to pay is often because they were either relying on ticket sales to raise the funds or they have a policy to pay after the event and decided the speaker’s performance wasn't as expected so withheld payment. 

But, even if the speaker did a bad performance or even failed to turn up because you changed the date and they couldn’t make the new date, and if you didn't check the Terms and Conditions you signed, you could still be liable and still have to pay.

Not fair is it!

Most organisations sign the Terms and Conditions of the speakers who are savvy enough to provide them, many without checking them carefully first.  In addition, many other speakers are reliant on just sending an invoice and a few email exchanges to be sufficient enough which means that while you don’t have to deal with paperwork and it seems a quick way to engage the speaker you want, you are in fact leaving your organisation wide open to paying for a bad performance.

While the industry is and works on word of mouth for hiring and finding speakers, there is still a high need for them so without protecting yourself and putting in place a proper system to limit your liability you could be hugely out of pocket as not only would you be paying the speaker, but the court cost, the time and energy involved and the hidden cost of audience dis-engagement from the event and if you are really unlucky, any potential media fallout too.

To avoid this when you book a speaker, make sure you:

1) Check their Terms and Conditions carefully to find out what happens if something does go wrong so you can fully understand what you would be expected to pay.  And if you don't like any of their Terms, ask for changes and agree to the new terms before you sign.

2) Understand and agree exactly what they will do for you for their fee before the day in writing.  Be reasonable as to what can be measured and what can't. Performance is considered objective unless it is clear they failed to meet requirements.  Remember: what I think is good might not be what you think is good, however them saying they are an expert on a subject and then clearly demonstrating their knowledge to be less than that of the audience is measurable!

3) If they want full payment upfront and you are not happy or able to commit, find a third party format to hold the payment for you: iwantaspeaker, paypal, a client bank account, solicitor, speaker bureau as examples, or come to a payment arrangement where you are happy to take the risk and lose the sum without it being detrimental to your budget.  

4) If the speaker doesn't have any Terms and Conditions, doesn't have any standard contracts and only relies on the ‘sending you an invoice and a few emails’ method, make sure you have in writing exactly what they will do to compensate you should they fail to deliver in all eventualities.  Or insist they use your process which de-risks you and standardises them.  If they fail to get through or won’t go through your process, don’t hire them.

Only by safe guarding yourself against all speakers you work with being a possible failure, will you be able to protect yourself from the actual one speaker who will take you to court and win even though they didn't perform well enough and didn't deserve their fee!

It's why we built iwantaspeaker.com