Invitation Only Summits with Major Executives, eh?
Posted by: greebie on: August 16, 2006
UPDATE, AGAIN
I got another email for Customer Service Execs, which appears to have a different branding but seems like pretty much the same strategy. No security on the credit card form. Purposeful design to keep subfolders out of a Google index.
Here’s the letter I got:
Ryan, I hope this note finds you well. Would you have 10-15 minutes by
phone in the next few days to visit about a unique approach to provide
only interested, first-rate candidates to meet your customer service
staffing needs?As background, CustomerServiceExecs focuses on identifying and presenting
qualified, hard to find, executive and managerial candidates who are
currently employed. We maintain the largest database of customer service
professionals in existence. For a fraction of what your company would
spend on its own search, we can pre-screen up to 5 of the most qualified
and interested candidates for your available position(s) in about 10 days
for a flat fee. Whether your company hires one or all of the candidates
we may present, our fee remains the same.We specialize in searches for positions like VP Customer Service, VP
Customer and Product Support, Customer Service Director, Senior Customer
Service Manager, Customer Relationship Specialist, Customer Support
Operations and Director Guest Services. Our services are outlined at
www.CustomerServiceExecs.netPlease let me know when a good time to call might be, and I will confirm
back.Sincerely,
Jordan Freedman
CustomerServiceExecs
404-592-9904 Ext. 831
600 Northpark Building, Suite 1700
Atlanta, GA 30328
www.customerserviceexecs.net
UPDATE:
I like to try and be fair and balanced in my reporting, so I thought I should add the comments received from the people responsible for this product. So far, I have seen nothing that makes me think differently about the business. If a business is legit, why doesn’t it behave like one?
“Michael Smith” writes in a comment below:
The Customer Service Summit provides good value to its members and has a strong retention rate from year to year. Please call me directly if any questions about the Customer Service Summit, my contact information follows below. If there are any questions about the value, you may also visit our site and request a link to a past meeting recording so you can listen in and judge for yourself if the ideas discussed by some of the top executives in business are good ones. Also, thank you for some of the recommendations above (we will be changing the signup pages to https secured, etc) and we appreciate the feedback.
I strongly urge you to read through the comments and decide for yourself on this one. Here’s one from me, that summarizes my suspicions and here is a link to a forum that discusses the topic as well. “As legit as Quixstar” was a phrase that came up as well.
UPDATE: The word appears to be getting out, or “Chris” is getting more aggressive in his marketing. Here are the stats on this issue running from the original post until January 16, 2007.
So, this guy “Chris” emails me at work to invite me to join in on this great opportunity on behalf of a “board”. The site looks impressive. The names I could be hobnobbing include some of the top executives in some of the biggest companies around.
But I’m no dummy. I know about phishing schemes.
So, I check their information. Oddly, besides their site, I can’t find any information about these guys. They claim to be subsidiary of BizSummits which also looks pretty interesting. See, there are these scholarships offered to advanced high school students.
But the bells are still ringing. I can’t find who owns this service. So, I try the Ask-a service. I ask point-blank about the “board” that invited me to join this service. What’s the governance situation here? The response? Sorry, I don’t have the answer for you. You better talk to “Chris” about that.
An employee of a company does not know who the CEO is? Or at least a single “board” member? What gives?
Then I look into some of the impressive names listed as “members.” I find out that at least one is a senior finance VP. A Finance VP at a customer service summit? Not to deride finance people, but my experience is that they usually leave the customer service stuff to flaky guys like me. Besides they are too busy keeping our budgets in check.
Still, there _is_ an allure. Here’s how they claim to come to the decision that I belong in their elite group:
“While we cannot disclose individual nominations for privacy reasons, it is always one of two sources. Either a member directly nominated you, or we specifically wanted your company involved and researched the best executive.”
Of course I think I am the best executive. Of course I want the opportunity to mine the brains of the worlds most successful executives.
On the other hand, there’s always email. So, I email one of the listed executives. The response? The person has asked to have his name removed from the list because he has no affiliation with this group.
There is it. I hope someone does a Google search on these guys and sees this blog entry. While I can’t say for sure what these guys are up to — I do know 1) they do not want to tell you who owns the company, 2) they lied at least on one occassion about who is currently a member of the site and 3) they are asking for credit card information to charge you 300+ USD.
If you join this group, the best-case scenario is that you join a bunch of unprofessional hacks. At worst, these guys could be trying to steal your identification. Caveat Emptor dudes. It’s a nasty world out there.
127 Responses to "Invitation Only Summits with Major Executives, eh?"
[...] The original blog post here. [...]
October 4, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I’ve previously received 2 invitations. Both of them ended with a form that says “This message was send to _____ 0f _____ at _____. please disregard if you are not the intended recipient.” And yes, it said ’send’ not ’sent’. This made be suspicious.
Today I received a third that says, “Did you get the email I sent you last? Just in case it didn’t get to you I’ve copied it below for your review. If you get a chance please let me know of your interest.”
Spent a bunch of time googling and finally found this site. Thanks for confirming for me that this is junk.
October 4, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Yeah. I got a followup reply to which I responded “I am waiting for you to show me some governance information such as the names of the board that approved my invitation.”
They responded with another followup message. Ha!
Either their customer service sucks or they are a rip off.
October 5, 2006 at 1:08 pm
I got the same invitations and follow-up, except they were for the CIO Summit. Thanks for the warning.
February 19, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I’ve been getting these from “Chris” for a while, I think I even got a phone call. I could never figure out what they were up to. so I’m glad I finally googled my way onto your blog. Thanks for the heads up.
[...] lack of information on the website about who and what these folks are about, a trend similar to the Customer Service Summits email I received before. Beware of this. It is likely a [...]
July 3, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I know I’m very late with this comment, but thank you for making this public. I have been receiving this guys emails for some time and was always wary of them.
Another Scam Foiled!!!
November 15, 2007 at 1:01 pm
The scam continues. Apparently this is fairly well organized, at least in an attempt to charge the $300. I too was “invited”:
“On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Customer Service Summit because of your key role and experience.”
Really… wow, I’m getting goose bumps. OH, one small thing, I am a CTO. I do not deal directly with our constituents. My drive is technology planning for our organizations. Hmm. Nice try, wrong hit. But then, in mass scams, you’ll get that from time to time…
November 20, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Received an invitation to CIO Summit from Chris Jameson. One of the odd things is that the url turns into an IP address (64.41.119.180) when you go to the site. He’s asking $1000.00 for the CIO Summit. There are a number of Summit sites with the exact same layout.
November 20, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Got mail from Chris too, addressed to an email of mine from a company I was CTO at 3.5 years ago. These guys are clearly not doing their homework. Googled and here I am. Thanks.
November 21, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to post. For a brief moment I was sucked in by being one of the “very best executives and visionaries in customer service management”. However,the anonymous nomination raised flags for me right away. Gotta love Google.
November 29, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Thanks guys. I just got my invitation from “Chris”, and decided to Google The Customer Service Summit before clicking on their website or deleting the e-mail as trash. Now I can delete with a clear conscience.
Not a bad scam. I can see how this could look interesting to incautious guys looking for something to add to their cv.
Tom
December 5, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Just received a followup from a Chris Jameson to the ‘invitation only’ CIO Summit. The email was sent to an address that is, purposely, only posted to our web site. I ran a WHOIS on the domain ‘CIO-Summit.net’ and discovered it was created a month ago, 07 Nov, 2007. The web site has a polished facade, but the address displayed as “http://64.41.119.180/ciosummit/”. Googling turned up nothing on them at all, yet they have this scrolling list of big company names on the web site. Fishy.
Besides, I really couldn’t see how some unknown group would be interested to hear my opinion on CIO issues.
Apparently this is some B-school grads senior-project idea on how to make money:
1) Buy mailing lists of supposed CIOs, CTOs, Customer Service, etc.
2) Send out emails trying to flatter the folks on the mailing list by inviting them to an important sounding summit.
3) Give the invitees the honor of paying $300 or $1000 or whatever to allow them to join the exclusive summit.
4) Profit!
Thanks for this site and the comments.
– Mark
December 5, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Thanks for this info. I did indeed turn to google to check out what definitely looked like a suspicious email. Thanks for the post. It saved me the time to go through all the steps you did to check this out.
December 11, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Thank you so much for publishing this – there isn’t a lot out there about this hoax! In case anyone is interested, it appears there are several different “summits” operating under this same facade. My invitation was from Alex Parnell to the Public Relations Summit.
December 12, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Thanks for everyones comments on this scam. I got it too, Scumbags.
The funny part is, I work for a guy named Chris Jameson. So I thought he was messing with me.
We need more blogs like this one that inform people of scumbags like this “Chris”.
Thanks again.
December 17, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Thanks for all the info. My boss forwarded his invitation to me to check out. Gotta love google!
December 19, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Figured it was something stupid like this, thanks for this site! I got another mail that seemed similar it resolved to 64.41.119.180; the same site address as this summit! beware!
December 19, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Oh yes the IP was from “Hiring Spring” website that was trying to recruit me.
December 19, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I got this email too. I should have known it was spam — my filter’s usually good at these things, but sadly it missed this one. It was addressed to the completely wrong person (my domain is a catchall) so I stupidly replied and said they had the wrong email address – damn. If I’d waited 3 more mins I would have found this page. Luckily I don’t like in the States so I presume they’ll leave me alone!
December 20, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Based on the Comments dates, I’d say they are running on a quarterly scam/scheme. I also got the follow-up, having deleted the original as spam, and decided to look into it. This was one of the first sites to pop up, so thanks Ryan for posting it, and everyone else for keeping it going.
December 21, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Hey Andrew,
I was looking at data for visits to this post and cannot find a quarterly trend based on that. There was a spike in August and then again in November which seems to be holding right on up until now. If I’m bored, I may put my data through some seasonality stats tests. 
It’s hard to say what the visits are all about though — with the increase in comments, my post may be just easier to find via search engines. Also, blog rankings increase over time of course. Or maybe “Chris” is expanding his ops over time.
Either way, the more people who discuss this scheme, the better.
December 22, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Well, “Chris” has mailed me personally today after his first post didn’t get past the spam filter. I’m just an engineer living in a cellar at a startup! Why me? And they got my firstname/lastname and company correct, too – one would expect a mangled e-mail label instead. Maybe because someone put my name somewhere into “LinkedIn” during the last month?
Googling “bizsummits ciosummit” just gives two entries, on of them this blog.
Some raw domain name info and data from ARIN:
[www.]ciosummit.org –> 216.40.45.31 (hosted by Tucows International, Toronto). Reverse name resolution yields “31.0/24.45.40.216.in-addr.arpa.”
[www.]bizsummits.org –> 216.40.45.31, as above
http://www.TheCIOSummit.org —CNAME–> theciosummit.org
theciosummit.org -> 66.111.39.41 (hosted by United Colocation Group, Inc, San-Francisco). Reverse name resolution yields “theciosummit.org.”.
But!
If you point your browser to “www.theciosummit.org”, you browser gets a “redirect” response which makes it read from “http://64.41.119.180/ciosummit/” instead. That IP address belongs to “Hostway Corporation” of Chicago. It doesn’t reverse-resolve.
And now point your browser to “http://64.41.119.180/” directly.You get the web page of something called “MobileSoft” apparently also called “MobileBriefs”, which indeed is hosted at that IP address.
Curioser and curioser….
January 2, 2008 at 11:35 am
I have never been a CIO or CTO. I’ a codemonkey/tech support person. And yet, I got a special invitation – and follow-up – to an exclusive CIO summit.
A fishy smell would be preferable to the odor this thing has.
January 3, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I received the “follow-up” invite to cio-summit.net this morning. Always wary of scams and phishing, I found my way here. Thanks for doing the leg work, and thanks to everyone else here for posting their experiences with the scam and how irrelevant the invites usually are to their positions.
(btw, I’m a webmaster at an alternative rock radio station – a sure candidate for clandestine teleconferences with major business players, yes?)
January 4, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I, too, received an invitation from Alex Parnell, and found your page via Google. Thanks for the research. While I do have the important-sounding title of Communications Specialist at my 20-person firm, I certainly don’t consider myself one of “the nation’s leading public relations executives.” And I’m a little annoyed that they found all of my contact information.
I’m really looking forward to the follow-up…
January 4, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I have also received several of these messages from Chris. This last one sounded concerned that I have not gotten back to him. Started digging around and found much of the same info as above. This one kind of catches your eye. I get CIO stuff all time, the real kicker was the $1000 right to participate.
January 8, 2008 at 11:34 am
I appreciate your blog post here. Received one of these invitations as well. Thanks for taking the time to log your experience!
January 8, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I, too, had the honor of being “invited” to join. Also a skeptical type, I was delighted–and not surprised–to find this site as the only other listing in my Google search. Thanks to all for making my suspicions seem all the more valid. Anyone else get taken by the “Cambridge Who’s Who”?
Thanks!
January 10, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I’m a network admin. Did a Whois lookup on cio-summit.org and saw bizsummits. Did a google of that and found this blog. Thanks blogging. Cio-summit.org is now on our mail server’s blacklist.
January 14, 2008 at 11:39 am
I got one of these today, only the guy’s now using cio-summit.net, which forwards to http://64.41.119.180/ciosummit/. I’ve forwarded the email to us-cert.gov and antiphishing.org, and sent a note to cio-summit.com making them aware of this scam.
January 14, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I am/was an IT Manager over eBusiness integration for division of the worlds second largest sporting goods company and of course feel I am CIO material right? But to be invited to the CIO-Summit by their board… what and honor! Now given my position is being eliminated as of 01/31/2008 and I am looking for work this sounded like a great opportunity to network… thanks for you blog and to the others who have kept it going with post. You have confirmed my instinct and saved me the time of more research. For those real CEO, CIO and VP of IT/MIS out there who need solid people who happen to also be professional ITers… I can be found at itsprez@yahoo.com.
January 16, 2008 at 12:16 am
received this today from “Chris Jameson [chris@thecustomerservicesummit.org]” . . .
from thecustomerservicesummit.org ([207.36.237.158]Received: from 207.36.237.158 ([207.36.237.158])
by thecfosummit.org
He “hadn’t heard back from me” and “inviting me to participate” not that I have the time these days. thanks for tracking this; I was suspicious enough to avoid clicking the link altogether . . .
January 17, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Thanks for the blog. Got an e-mail today from “The Public Relations Summit” but it all led to the same group.
January 18, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I got an email from these guys too. Looks like it goes from ciosummit.org to bizsummits.org up to vcsouth.com. VC South actually has bio’s and photographs of people in the company. Bizsummits is one of the things they own.
January 18, 2008 at 3:53 pm
The general partner “Michael Price” could very easily be mistaken for this guy too.
Again, I’d focus on the fact that their credit card form has not https:// on it, nor does it use SSL.
Also, there are a number of press releases out there about their quarterly earnings that have made the mainstream media too. The release mentions names of people who do not exist in the “Team” page of the VCSouth website.
January 18, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Another update. Just asked a few business librarians out there the questions “is bizsummits or VCSouth in any stock market you are aware of?”
Response: “I can’t find any reference to them being a publicly held company. Also not for parent co, http://vcsouth.com/ – private eq firm.”
That makes This Press Release seem quite dubious.
January 21, 2008 at 4:26 am
Wow, this is very strange…
I’m 15 and do little with computers and I got this e-mail (well, the one from Alex for the Public Relations Summit), but apparently I have the same name as a chief scientist at Chevron Petroleum Co. with a Ph.D in geological sciences (the magic of google). Stupid scammers can’t even get e-mail addresses right between different people.
January 23, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I just got a “followup” email from “Chris.” He/She sounded a bit hurt that I hadn’t replied to the first missive (which I discarded as Spam.) PJ
January 23, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Greetings readers of The Other Librarian: This blog and the postings were brought to my attention today by a prospective member, and I thought I should comment. I am the President of BizSummits, which is a legitimate, professional development organization that has 13 individual summits providing 12 teleseminars a year in each of those individual summits. Our organization has been active for over 3 years. We have a fulltime program development staff and full time customer service. It looks like there has been a problem with the online membership form and perhaps with some erroneous invitations, as well.
Based on these comments, I’ve alerted our IT staff and offer my apologies for any inconvenience or concern this may have caused. We are registered in the state of Georgia and the Secretary of State can certainly verify this information if needed.
In short, we are a legitimate organization providing quality speakers and value to our members. I appreciate the opportunity to post here to clear up the misconceptions and the quality feedback received.
January 24, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Lee,
I am glad you want to prove yourself a legitimate organization. Of course, being a registered business has no bearing on the legitimacy of your business practices, many of which I believe to be suspect. Let me start from the top.
1. While bizsummits and its possible parent company VCsouth may be registered businesses, a business librarian has not been able to find them as publically traded companies. Have we erred here? Are these companies private or public?
If these companies are private, here’s the problem: this press release comparing your end-of-quarter growth to the Corporate Executive Board Company is very suspicious. Why? Well, such press releases are usually intended to attract investors to publicly traded companies. Since bizsummits does not appear to be publicly traded, there are no investors. So, who is the audience for this press release? What private company wants to give its competitors such an edge?
One could suspect that the press release was sent to dupe people into thinking your service is more than it is (you have to admit, scams are pretty common these days). You could, of course, fix this by 1) providing a stock ticker symbol for your company or 2) explaining why you would put out such a misleading press release.
2. If your IT staff does not understand that a form with credit card information should be placed under a secure connection, they should be fired immediately and you should be fired for hiring them. Further, any company that does not understand this small obvious detail has no business hosting CIO summits.
Of course, your IT staff does seem to know how to make certain pages of your website unlinkable & unindexable. Why is this a suspicious practice? Well, you see the people you highlight as participants in your “summits” for instance would not be able to search their own name to find it on your site. One could suspect that this fairly advanced technique is used to prevent people noticing that their name is being used to attract unwitting scam victims to your site.
So, your IT staff appear to be ignorant of fairly obvious practices on the one hand, and fairly knowledgeable of not-so-obvious practices on the other. You must understand that a business with such suspicious business practices would make your average joe like myself think your business falls under one of two categories: a) weirdly incompetent or b) a scam.
The obvious solution to these issues would be a) include a secure connection for the credit card info — even better, use a service like PayPal to increase the security of your transfers b) do your website normal, with pages or database queries like everyone else.
c) Your company appears to be going through alot of turnover for one that seems so “successful.” Where’s Chris? Where’s Alex Parnell? Why is Lee Culberson stated as the COO on the vcsouth page (as of today), yet here you call yourself the “president” of bizsummits? And why can’t I link back to the page where you show your shining faces to the world?
d) The only reason we got to your site is because you spammed us.
e) Oh yeah, I brought this blog post to “Chris”’s attention a while back, and its been in the top Google results for quite a while now. Are you telling me that no one in your organization has ever Googled your company? What kind of marketing is that? Alot could be resolved if you just responded to the concerns say, last year.
In short, while I cannot confirm whether or not your business is truly a scam, I can say that I find many of your business practices are daringly cunning, yet notably incompetent to someone who has a cursory understanding of good business.
Your business sucks too bad to justify your comparison to the EXBD, and it lacks the transparency to allow me to let your claims of “legitimacy” go unanswered. I trust that the readers of this blog will understand my view on this.
January 24, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I’ve been corrected on this one. Of course, a private company can have investors — except a mass press release would imply that a company was appealing to investors in a public market, as opposed to partners in a firm.
January 25, 2008 at 1:11 am
Typos. Vague references. And the best of all — Claims of a PR elite from a firm so elusive about its own people, in the world of PR that does just the opposite?
A Google search reveals nothing. An aerial map search brings you to a blank intersection. But hey — at least they’re a Quiznos close by.
January 28, 2008 at 2:41 pm
“Chris” seems to have a girlfriend named Lee Culberson, whose email subject was, “Peggy-a quick question” from CIO-summit.org. I’m not a CIO. Glad I found you to confirm my suspicions and make me glad I didn’t open it.
Thanks.
January 31, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Wow, I’m so excited to be invited by Alex Parnell to be considered as an elite public relations executive. What an honor for a worship pastor who is more concerned about his guitar than PR! However, my first and last name and church were correct, but he must mean the other worship pastor at a church with the same name more than 200 miles away. Darn, that other me must be so proud.
February 1, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Thanks, they’re incredibly patient on live customer support, feel free to mess with them.
February 1, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I socially engineered a free account. It looks as if they do have poor schmucks that get suckered in, but none of the content on the site is worth listening to. There are some homemade audio clips and recordings of the members-only teleconferences. None of the big names they advertise actually use the site. Obviously.
I’d rank them as “as legit as quixstar” They probably won’t illegally use your credit card, but honestly, it’s just a huge payment with little/no product.
February 3, 2008 at 8:13 pm
GOOD GROUP TO JOIN
The Customer Service Summit provides good value to its members and has a strong retention rate from year to year. Please call me directly if any questions about the Customer Service Summit, my contact information follows below. If there are any questions about the value, you may also visit our site and request a link to a past meeting recording so you can listen in and judge for yourself if the ideas discussed by some of the top executives in business are good ones. Also, thank you for some of the recommendations above (we will be changing the signup pages to https secured, etc) and we appreciate the feedback.
[Ed. note: Further commentary deleted. ]
February 4, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I think this forum is a good spot to determine whether you ought to believe Michael Price’s comment or not.
While I’m not too keen to have a mudslinging competition on my blog, I did think the thread was pretty funny.
February 13, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I decided to google these guys together with the word “scam”. I arrived here!
It warms my heart to see how our Internet community looks out for each other.
Thanks to everybody who participated in this discussion. Keep up the good work.
February 16, 2008 at 5:44 am
I think this is a conspiracy …
I received the Alex Parnell Public Relations Summit email. We know it’s a scam. Google then leads to this Blog. I think there’s some some collusion here!
Just kidding.
Thanks for the heads up as well as a very entertaining and engaging thread.
I must admit though, it did feel good to receive SPAM that validated the work and effort I’ve put in all these years!!!
February 19, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Here’s the e-mail I just got from “Chris”
—————————————-
Did you get the email I sent you last? Just in case it didn’t get to you I’ve copied it below for your review. If you get a chance please let me know of your interest.
Thanks,
Chris
—–Original Message—–To: From Name: Chris JamesonSubject: question.
Hi
On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Operations Summit because of your key operations role and experience. The Operations Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the very best executives and visionaries in operations management. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful leaders whose primary agenda is to help each other outperform. I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background, http://www.TheOperationsSummit.net. Take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Chris Jameson
The Operations Summit
1200 Abernathy Road
17th FloorAtlanta, GA 30328
Chris@TheOperationsSummit.net
http://www.TheOperationsSummit.net
February 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Chris made a BIG mistake. I work at the same address, same floor, so the management is well aware of the inappropriate use of their address being used. They have no record of the company or “Chris Jameson” working there. If they do not reveal themselves to the management, the suspicion of address theft could be pursued.
March 3, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I have received emails from the same Abarnathy Road address – but with different names and events.
Most are using Chris as a first name.
Scam artists who are using multiple identities often keep their own first name and alter the surname. – so that if they are approached in public, they will always be able to answer to the first name without raising the suspicions of people within earshot.
These names should be added to this blog so that others will find this on a search:
Feb 21 2008:
Alex Purnell of
PackedEvents.com
Feb 13 2008:
Chris Taylor of
SurveyExecutives.net
Dec 3 2007:
Chris Landon of
LeadFunnel.com
March 5, 2008 at 6:23 pm
And the Abernathy Road people keep on coming…
Mar 5:
Jordan Freedman
MarketingExecs
Feb 27:
Marcie Harruff
SurveyExecutives
Sending any reply at all will only verify that your email address is valid – potentially to be put up for sale to phishing scammers.
March 6, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Whoever this Chris is, he’s done some homework. The email I just received says:
“For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as:” then lists my correct full name, company, email street address, city, state, and phone number. The only error is the zip code, it’s 1000 miles away and not even numerically close.
Freaky. Thanks so much for keeping this open!
April 1, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Thanks so much for this blog post. It just saved me from asking my bosses about it and looking like an idiot!
I have no beef with Alex or others who work for this organization. They’re just an events organization trying to provide networking and seminar activities. It’s honest work. At least they were polite by working over email and not harrassing me on the phone like other vendors.
The problem with this service is the 1) ego trap it lays for prospective users, an insult to our intelligence in the long run, and closely related 2) their attempt at cloaking the “invite only” selection in mystery — if you’re just spamming us as prospective members then admit it. It’s called marketing, not invite-only.
At the end of the day, there are FABULOUS PR and other industry organizations out there created by the professionals working in that sector in a non-profit setting. PRSA and IABC are truly fantastic for the PR industry.
I don’t resent receiving a solicitation from this group. I do resent the misleading sales tactics. Even though the schedule of PR events they are hosting look interesting, they lost me at hello…
April 17, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Steer away from these guys. I’ve been serially spammed since Q4 last year by a variety of people, curiously all with the same Abernathy Rd. address in Atlanta. As above, they use multiple web sites, such as TheCMOSummit.org, PackedEvents.com, MarketingExecs.net, ConstantLeads.net, MeetingSetters.com, etc. If you check out the registrar of each of these sites, they all go back to Michael Price, the founder/CEO of VCSouth.
I have asked on at least 4 occasions (via reply email) to be taken off of their email / spamming lists, to no avail. Minimally they are in violation of the Federal CAN-SPAM act by failing to comply with these requests. Despite their protestations posted here, no legitimate organization would risk fines and reputational risks by failing to follow this simple law.
Be aware!
April 29, 2008 at 10:28 am
They are also soliciting those in the security arena as well. I received an invitation to the CSOSummit (chief security officer) recently. Same address and this one was openly registered to mprice@vs-south. The email was from a Taylor Evans.
I think they are trying to build a business around these summits but are using questionable tactics in the pursuit of selling more people.
April 30, 2008 at 11:22 am
I too received an email from this group (not Chris, but Taylor), except mine was for the CSO Summit. I became skeptical as soon as they stated they were an “invitation only group” – I thought hmmm… who invited me? Then they clearly said they couldn’t disclose that information. Here’s the email:
Hello, Dan. On behalf of our Board of Directors, I wanted to personally extend an invitation to you for The CSO Summit because of your key role and experience.
As an introduction, The CSO Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the nation’s leading security management executives. We provide these professionals who are short on time the opportunity to consistently gain
fresh insight and experience of other top-flight security professionals to solve pressing matters of common interest. We meet monthly via interactive teleconferences to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of
other successful security executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both valuable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks, Dan.
Sincerely,
Taylor Evans
The CSO Summit
1200 Abernathy Road
17th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30328
T 404-592-9903 Ext 804
Mail back to decline further.
http://www.TheCSOSummit.org
May 8, 2008 at 11:37 am
I wouldn’t characterize this as a scam, though I would question its value.
Here’s another slightly different sample in its entirety (my info redacted). Please note that I am not an executive and I assume my spam-blocker caught the first e-mail he refers to. Also, the contact information at the end is readily available on our company Web site:
————–
Matt,
Did you get the email I sent you last? Just in case it didn’t get to you I’ve copied it below for your review. If you get a chance please let me know of your interest.
Thanks,
Alex
—–Original Message—
To: Matt ________________
From Name: Alex Parnell
Subject: Matt, question.
Hello, Matt. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Public Relations Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Public Relations Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the nation’s leading public relations executives. We meet monthly via interactive teleconferences to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful public relations executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks, Matt.
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
600 Northpark Building
Atlanta, GA 30328
800-518-8652 Ext. 804
Mail back to decline further.
Alex@ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as: Matt _________, (Company), (work e-mail), (Address, City, State, ZIP), (phone number)
May 15, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hi folks,
Also received the PR Summit invitation. Like many of you, I’ve only seen a message labelled follow-up , not the original.
Given the absence of a time-date stamp on the original message ‘Alex’ includes, I suspect the follow-up aspect is just another part of this well-constructed ruse. Obviously the message has just enough credibility and individuality to encourage each of us to look for more information – just in case! – instead of deleting it outright.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve taken the time to investigate one of these kinds of missives. I am a little bit ashamed to admit I was so eager to succumb to the flattery…
Thanks very much for the warning!
May 19, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Funny. I did a search for “theciosummit” and there were no results for the .org site. So I searched “theciosummit.org” and got 3 results: this warning post, a whois lookup, and a site to buy spammy things (not listing it so this comment doesn’t get blocked!).
May 28, 2008 at 10:55 am
Another email from these guys came today.
Any poster here who claims they do not believe this is a scam is either very naive or part of the plan. I don’t know exactly what their scam is, whether it’s phishing or “send us your money today then goodbye to ya”.
Today’s email came from this name:
Shawn Bridges
Constant Leads
404-592-9956 Ext. 87
17th Floor
1200 Abernathy Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30328
June 3, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Yup – Here’s Another scam email:
Bill,
Did you get the email I sent you last? Just in case it didn’t get to you I’ve copied it below for your review. If you get a chance please let me know of your interest.
Thanks,
Alex
—–Original Message—
To: Bill Brady
From Name: Alex Parnell
Subject: Stephen, question.
Hello, Bill. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Public Relations Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Public Relations Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the nation’s leading public relations executives. We meet monthly via interactive teleconferences to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful public relations executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks, Bil.
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
600 Northpark Building
Atlanta, GA 30328
800-518-8652 Ext. 804
Mail back to decline further.
Alex@ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.org
For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as: Bill Brady, Company Name,
myemail, , , , myphone
June 4, 2008 at 2:01 am
They’re back again with another name, executivesurveys.net, registered in Feb 2008. Owned by bizsummits with which Google led me here.
Well crafted to avoid spam filters, using SPF too. Sent from New York via South California:
Received: from executivesurveys.net (hiringspring.com [63.209.191.89] (may be forged)) Tue, 3 Jun 2008 22:31:02 +0200
Received: from 72.232.235.26 by scantron2.com (Exact Sender 3.8) Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:30:50 -0400
“Hi, Andrew. We are conducting research on software development. As someone in that position, we’d like your input. Can you help us?
This online survey should take under 15 minutes to complete. To show our appreciation for participating in this survey, you will receive either a $10 gift certificate to Amazon or that amount can be donated to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Your responses will be kept strictly confidential and only reported in aggregate. Your participation will not be used for any sales or marketing purposes.
View the Survey
Andrew, thank you for your help with our research!
Chris Taylor
Executive Surveys
1200 Abernathy Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30328
Reply to cease further.”
Needless to say, I won’t be filling out the survey.
June 11, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for posting this! They also run the same scam with COO Summit
thesoosummit.org
Same ‘Chris’ guy – Chris Jameson was who my scam email was from.
I received the initial invitation and then a personal follow up email .
June 27, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Ryan,
You’re a good man. I similarly got an email like that, this one from Taylor Evans and this time The Product Development Summit (.org no less). My antennae went up too and I started cruising around to see if they were legit. I
Same basic scheme, new market:
“…On behalf of our Board of Directors, I wanted to
personally extend an invitation to you for The Product Development Summit because of your key role and experience.
“As an introduction, The Product Development Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the nation’s leading product development and management executives. …”
Same address as yours,
The Product Development Summit
1200 Abernathy Road
17th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30328
Thanks to your tip I’ll just block ‘em. My reply to decline (which I would have done had they been legit) would only encourage them.
Thanks again. Trust in a librarian.
Jill.
August 12, 2008 at 11:43 am
it seems like a followup to this summit is MarketingExecs or spam staffing. thanks for this post (the 2nd time)
From Name: Jordan Freedman
Subject: Jason, meeting coordination.
Jason, would you have time in the next few days to briefly talk by phone about an innovative approach for providing only interested, first-rate candidates to meet your company’s staffing needs?
As background, MarketingExecs focuses on identifying and presenting qualified, hard to find, executive and managerial marketing candidates who are employed but not actively pursuing opportunities. We maintain the largest database of marketing professionals in existence. For a fraction of what your company would spend on its own search, we can pre-screen up to 5 of the most qualified and interested candidates for your available
position(s) in 10 days for a flat fee.
We specialize in placing the following types of candidates: Sr. V.P.
Sales and Marketing, Director of Sales and Marketing, Marketing and Sales Manager, Product Planning Manager, Advertising Director or Manager, P.R.
Director or Manager, and Corporate Communications Director or Manager.
Whether your company hires one or all of the candidates we may present, our fee remains the same. Our services are outlined at http://www.MarketingExecs.net
Let me know when you might be available for a call and I will confirm back.
Best regards,
Jordan Freedman
MarketingExecs
800-518-8652 Ext. 831
http://www.MarketingExecs.net
To become a part of our database for potential candidate selection, please visit our partner site at http://www.marketingexecs.net/industryexperience
August 21, 2008 at 10:36 am
Hi everybody – here’s another new name & message to add to this list for the purposes of an online search:
Hi YOUR FIRST NAME, could we schedule a time in the next few days to discuss a few
marketing and sales ideas that would benefit YOUR COMPANY NAME?
ListK is a leader in lead generation and email marketing solutions. We
have assisted marketing professionals at top companies including Motorola,
Sun Microsystems and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts add email to their
internal databases, set meetings, pack events and drive leads to their
sales teams. We have the largest database of B2B decision-maker emails in
North America and a sophisticated deployment and tracking platform that
gets delivered to inboxes and generates response rates three times higher
than internal mail clients or software programs.
Let our email experts and technology jumpstart your fourth quarter!
Please reply if you have time in the next few days for a brief call and
I’ll confirm back. Thanks YOUR FIRST NAME, I look forward to speaking with you.
Best regards,
Terry Foster
List-K.com
17th Floor
600 NorthPark Building
Atlanta, GA 30328
404-592-9906 x1
http://www.list-k.com
September 9, 2008 at 5:32 pm
New tactic, same group. Received an e-mail today from Chris, inviting me a teleseminar on behalf of the Leadership Association. The mailing address rang a bell–I got spammed by these guys last year and had checked them out then. I poked around their site and found they are indeed part of the BizSummits group.
It actually sounds like a decent discussion but since these folks have zero credibility, I’m not gonna bite.
Hi XYZ, I wanted to let you know that we have scheduled a teleseminar on Wednesday, September 24th that I think your team would benefit from, “How Nonprofits are Using Web 2.0 Tools: Recruiting, Educating and Engaging Constituents.” We’ve invited a prestigious panel of speakers to join us:
- David J. Neff, Director of Web, Film and Interactive Strategies, with the American Cancer Society’s High Plains Division
- Carie Lewis, Internet Marketing Manager, with the Humane Society of the United States
- Cassandra Koenen, Director of Online Campaigns and Marketing, with the International Fund for Animal Welfare
Would you take a moment to review the details at http://www.theleaderassociation.com\web20?
Learn how leading nonprofits are recruiting new constituents on Facebook and Change.org, using YouTube and Flickr to educate their supporters, engaging activists via Twitter and Second Life, and using social mapping and event sites to manage local and national campaigns. The teleseminar takes place from 1:30 to 3:00 PM EST and is easily accessed via the Internet and phone. Please advise if you can make it.
Best regards,
Chris Weller
Program Director
The Leader Association
1200 Abernathy Rd., 17th Floor
Atlanta, GA 30328
(800) 518-8652 x81
Mail back to decline further.
http://www.TheLeaderAssociation.com
September 11, 2008 at 12:38 pm
You mean I am not one of the top executives and visionaries in public relations? I actually called the phone number listed and received a strange message about a “call source number that is no longer in service”. I did a WHOIS search on http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.org and came up with
Mike Price
801 Kellerman Kreek
Marietta, Georgia 30068
1.7709989999
When I searched his name and address I came up with
http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_0g6kzz
a business listing for Bizsummits with a phone number of (770) 518-1636 which is a home phone number for Michael and Olivia Price. Wonder if she is in on the scam as well.
September 11, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Yet another recipient of these spams. I’ve been ignoring them, and finally decided to do a bit of googling today to see what came up.
Fortunately, “cio summit spam” and “cio summit scam” both show your post as the top link.
A quick bit of whois’ing and I can see it’s from the same guys. They’re asking for a cool USD 1000, now.
Thanks for the post. It’s still relevant two whole years later.
October 9, 2008 at 12:09 pm
more….
XXXXX, did you get my last email? If it didn’t make it to your desk, I’ve
copied it below for your review. Let me know a good time to follow-up
with you by phone.
Thanks,
Shawn
Hi XXXXX, I wanted to introduce myself and see if we could set a time to
speak over the next few days if you could please advise.
As background, ConstantLeads specializes in generating a continuous
stream of daily leads for your sales force. We have access to the largest
database of buyers and prospects for your industry and we contact a
portion of them each day to generate interest and live inquiries. We then
pass the interested leads to your sales force in real time for follow-up
and closing. Clients tell us they are pleasantly surprised at how many
qualified leads we have successfully generated for them each day. Here is
our site as an overview,
http://www.TheConstantLeads.net
Please advise on a time and I will call you then. Thanks, XXXXX.
Sincerely,
Shawn Bridges
The Constant Leads
404-592-9956 Ext. 87
17th Floor
1200 Abernathy Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30328
October 9, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Quixtar is a legit company, btw. You may not like their marketing, but there’s no question about it thier legitmacy.
October 9, 2008 at 8:42 pm
@brett hill “Legit” depends on who you talk to. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is “legit.” There are lots of crappy companies that are legal, but from my standards (and really the standards of anyone who believes in human decency) a company that tries to dupe people into buying a crappy product is not legit.
October 14, 2008 at 10:35 am
I too have received 2 personal invites which was surprising to me since I have not worked for 10 years and have been raising a family. I am surely not an executive. How do you think my name came up?!!
October 20, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I’ve got one which I have not read yet on this site. Below is the email I was sent;
Due to an unexpected cancellation from our scheduled presenter, I have an opening for our Engineering Summit’s next teleconference on Thursday, October 23rd at Noon Eastern Time. I am wondering if you would be able to present. I know that the timing is short, but I am certain the group would benefit from you, if you are available. Additionally, this would be a great opportunity for your company to get in front of a group of Engineering Executives.
Some of the topics that they are looking for speakers on are below my email signature. However, ANY high-content topic that would be of value to your peers in the Engineering field would be also be appropriate.
This will be done remotely via telephone and will only take an hour of your time. It will start with your 35-40 minute presentation and will follow with 10 minutes of questions. Please let me know if you’d be interested/available or can pass this plea for help on to someone else in your company, a direct report perhaps, that might be a fit. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate any effort you can make in assisting me to get this cancellation covered.
Sincerely,
Adam Snyder
Assistant Director
The Engineering Summit
1200 Abernathy Rd
Atlanta, GA 30328
800-518-8652 Ext.819
Adam@bizsummits.org
http://www.TheEngineeringSummit.org
I have been emailing back and forth with this person and he has been responding to questions. I dont quite know what their angle is on this but I dont get a good vibe from it.
November 4, 2008 at 2:21 pm
These folks are now targeting non-profits as well.
I’ve gotten two of their solicitations in the past two months. One from Chris Weller of the Leader Association. The other from Pat Weller at Bizteleseminars. Both have the same address and phone number right down to the extension number. After the first one I e-mailed them to remove me from their lists but they don’t seem to be respecting my request.
I wondered if they used names that could be male or female (Chris, Pat, Terry, Lee, etc.) so that whoever answers a call can claim to be the one who sent the invitation.
November 17, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Glad I found this blog! I’ve been a CIO for a number of years now and like to think I’m good at my job, but for the life of me I could not figure out why cio-summit.org was so interested in me since they couldn’t possibly know anything about me. I must admit their approach is quite unique, stroke the person’s ego and see if they bite.
If anyone’s interested, here’s the letter I received:
Hi FIRSTNAME, it has been a couple of weeks since I last touched base and I wanted to check back in with you regarding the CIO Summit. We have a couple of openings in Groups 11 and 12 due to some retirements. I listed many of the existing members in these two groups at http://www.cio-summit.org for your review and I am sure you would benefit from the ideas. Below is an outline of some recent and upcoming teleconference speakers and topics.
Please let me know of your interest.
Sincerely,
Taylor Evans
The CIO Summit
http://www.cio-summit.org
For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as:
FIRSTNAME LASTNAME, YOUR ORGANIZATION, FIRSTNAME.LASTNAME@YOURDOMAIN.COM,
YOURPHONENUMBER
November 19, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Seems that “Chris” isn’t even bothering to find legitimate CIO’s or CTO’s anymore. I have a domain set up for hobby stuff and have the email server set up to send to ma anything that’s going to any email address that doesn’t really exist in the domain.
Looks to me like they’re just doing “blasting” and sending to every name they can think of at “domainname.com”.
Definitely a phishing deal. They are sending this garbage to people who don’t even exist!
December 4, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I just did a live chat with these folks to check them out. Here is the exact transcript of the call (so watch out for these folk and buyer beware!!)…
Aaron:
stop spamming this company!!!
http://otherlibrarian.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/invitation-only-summits-with-major-executives-eh/
Call accepted by operator Christy. Currently in room: Aaron, Christy.
Christy:
Hi Aaron!
Christy:
I’d be happy to remove your email address from our database.
Christy:
We need an email to remove, we would unlikely have sent to a yahoo address
Aaron:
why do you keep sending emails to us. everyone on the net says you guys are spammers.
Christy:
We are happy to remove you, just let us know what email to remove
Aaron:
I will gladly give you our company email if you give me a legitimate phone number to call. I will give it personally to you on the phone.
Aaron:
hello, are you still there christy?
Christy:
Call 1-800-518-8652 Ext. 804
Aaron:
I’m calling it now, hold on.
Aaron:
It is a disconnected number!!
Christy:
Wow. I am on a teleconference call but will be off in 45 minutes. Is there a number I can reach you at then?
Aaron:
If you are on a teleconference call then the number should be “busy” not disconnected. Guess the web is right, this is a scam. I shall post this transcript there (which I just copied).
Christy:
I am happy to call then, having our people also investigate why and can report to you then
Aaron:
Call then? You are not speaking english. Rephrase please.
Christy:
On a call
Aaron:
uh… yeah…. see you on the web…
December 4, 2008 at 4:27 pm
THIS IS A LEGITIMATE ORGANIZATION WITH OVER 1800 EXECUTIVE MEMBERS. The post above by Aaron was so unfair, our customer service answered his questions and the direct phone number he requested then said was disconnected is definitely working and connects directly with our customer service.
Also note that we have put in place the SSL secured ordering pages (https) as requested by earlier commentors on this blog. Feel free to call us at any time at 1-800-518-8652 Ext. 804. Thank you. -Lee Culberson
December 8, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I went to their website and couldn’t find owner details, so starting searching and found your blog. Thanks so much for the info. Here’s one more entry for the pile:
Alex Purnell
PackedEvents.com
1200 Abernathy Road, Suite 1700
Atlanta, GA 30328
404-592-9956 ext. 805
http://www.PackedEvents.com
Creepy how many “companies” can pack into one little suite. =)
December 18, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Wanna find out ALL the names they are using and ALL the scams they are perpetrating? Google the toll free number they just provided and you’ll see page after page of their various scams.
Any victim of these folks needs to make a formal referral to the Georgia Attorney General for a criminal investigation of their felonious “false pretense” and deceptive business practices.
First make a local police report then send a copy to the Attorney General. Be sure to reference all the other “business names” used.
Several or several dozen could be legitimate. Hundreds? I doubt it. Complaints can also be made to the phone company security dept, and they will cut off their phone.
They are also using the name Gene Martin in addition to the the others previously referenced. They are not very intelligent, because they continue doing (this phrase was redacted so as not to interfere with an ongoing investigation.)
January 16, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Somebody needs to stop these people. They’re still doing it as seen below. I found this blog with a phone number search.
Jose,
Did you get the email I sent you last? Just in case it didn’t get to you I’ve copied it below for your review. If you get a chance please let me know of your interest.
Thanks,
Alex
—–Original Message—–
To: Jose Sandoval
From: Alex Parnell
Subject: Jose, question.
Hello, Jose. On behalf of our Board of Directors, I wanted to personally extend an invitation to you for The Corporate Counsel Summit because of your key role and experience.
As an introduction, The Corporate Counsel Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the nation’s leading senior counsel executives. We provide these professionals who are short on time the opportunity to consistently gain fresh insight and experience of other top-flight legal executives to solve pressing matters of common interest. We meet monthly via interactive teleconferences to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful senior counsel executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both valuable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks, Jose.
http://www.TheCorporateCounselSummit.n et
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Corporate Counsel Summit
1200 Abernathy Rd., Suite 1700
Mail back to decline further
Atlanta, GA 30328
404-592-9903 Ext. 805
http://www.TheCorporateCounselSummit.n et
For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as: Jose Sandoval, Sandoval Jose Arnoldo
February 2, 2009 at 2:59 pm
This Lee Culberson who says she’s the president of Bizsummits is a woman. VCsouth owns Bizsummits and they have now changed their name to CEO Ventures. Look under “team” and you will see a couple of familiar names with photos.
Thanks for enlightening all of us to these scammers.
May 12, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Just wanted to let everyone know they are still at it. I just got this today from good ol’ Alex Parnell. I googled his name and found this post.
Hi Jamie, it has been a couple of months since I last touched base and I
wanted to check back in with you regarding The Corporate Counsel Summit.
We have a couple of openings in Groups 11 and 12 due to some retirements.
I listed many of the existing members in these two groups at
http://www.thecorporatecounselsummit.org for your review and I am sure you would
benefit from the ideas. Please let me know of your interest.
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Corporate Counsel Summit
1200 Abernathy Rd., Suite 1700
Mail back to decline further
Atlanta, GA 30328
404-592-9903 Ext. 805
http://www.thecorporatecounselsummit.org
For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact
information as: Jamie Gaines, Jamie Gaines
May 27, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Here’s an email I received today … I’m suspicious of anyone who addresses me personally, who I have never heard before! Naturally I started checking them out, and found this blog.
My alarm bells went off when I saw the group was from Georgia, and they wanted $1,000 in membership fees … heck, I’m from a small charity in Canada. Why are they chasing me down? They’re obviously spamming anyone and everyone.
Karin
> From: Taylor Evans
> Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 09:46:31 -0400
> Subject: Karin, question.
>
> Hi Karin. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into
> The HR Summit because of your key role and experience.
>
> The HR Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the very best HR
> executives and visionaries. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange
> what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential
> forum with dedicated groups of other successful HR leaders whose primary
> agenda is to help each other outperform. I am certain you will find the
> experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as
> background at
> http://www.hrsummit.net
>
> Take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks Karin.
>
> Sincerely,
> Taylor Evans
> The HR Summit
> 1200 Abernathiy Road, 17th Floor
> Atlanta, GA 30328
> 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
> http://www.hrsummit.net
June 8, 2009 at 11:30 am
these guys are giving Atlanta a bad name. They been spamming for years, simply switching domain names and last names of the supposed sender. My most recent spam from a Mr. Mark Loeloff at Marketing Coalition shows a NYC address but the domain name is registered to good old Michael Price at BizSummits. Search for posts on spam and BizSummits to read the entire sordid tale. It is a shame that an organization like this uses such cheap tactics. Definitely a reflection of their leadership.
June 9, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Hi Adam. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into the CIO Summit because of your key role and experience.
The CIO Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the very best CIO’s, key executives and visionaries in technology management. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful IT executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks Adam.
http://www.CIO-Summit.net
Sincerely,
Taylor Evans
CIO Summit
1200 Abearnathy Road, 17 th Flr.
Atlanta, GA 30328
Tel: 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
http://www.CIO-Summit.net
my reply?
Dear Mr Summit God,
Because I am a great CIO, I know you are a scam, and I know your name is not Taylor.
If you continue this scam, you may want to watch out for the FBI Watchdogs watching you this very moment. Perhaps in another country?
It is illegal to say you are associated w/ entities that have no understanding of who/what you are. You also can’t charge people 300-1000$+ for something you are clearly not providing.
Have a nice time in jail, and hefty fines you surely could not afford to pay — I am sure it will tarnish any credit you may have left to your name, and your “organization”.
Thanks for your intent, I had a good time reporting you to my friends over at the Cyber Crimes Dept. over here (that specialize in people like you).
Have a great day!
A Real CIO with a Real job.
June 26, 2009 at 10:41 am
This isn’t the first email along these lines that I’ve rec’d however thank you for posting this-all I had to do was a little “googling” & quickly found your site-THANK YOU again!!
June 30, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’ve gotten a new one, under the name of The Public Relations Summit. Nearly identical content in the body of the email as that posted by Chris?Alan?
Hi Jenna. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Public Relations Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Public Relations Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the nation’s top Directors and VPs of Public Relations, key executives and visionaries. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful PR executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform. Our site is at http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks Jenna.
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
17th Floor, 600 North Park Building.
Atlanta, GA 3O328
Tel. 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com
July 2, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I just received an invitation for the HR Summit from Mr/Ms Evans. I’m curious to hear if anyone has actually participated in one of these telephone conferences or teleseminars.
July 3, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Same here. Just reached the “reminder email” from Taylor Evans for the CMO-Summit. They certainly use an All Stars group of CMOs to lure you in. Fortunately, the email over-reached and bells went off. It was deafening. So, thankfully, I laid down my ego and googled right to this spot.
July 6, 2009 at 10:21 am
Hey, thanks for this posting…got the same Operations Summit email from our friend Chris Jameson….I always check for scams and found this posting…you saved me a lot of aggrevation.
b
July 9, 2009 at 11:33 am
I received a similar email from “Taylor Evans” for the CIO Summit.
They used an address in Atlanta and spelled “Abernathy” wrong. (I knew it was spelled wrong because I used to drive through Atlanta a lot.) That was my first clue of a problem.
Thanks for this blog. It 100% confirmed my suspicions.
J
July 10, 2009 at 10:46 am
Heh, I just started getting the Taylor Evans – CIO Summit emails. Apparently I filled out some registration somewhere where I listed my name as “I’m Greg,” so the email begins “Hi I’m” and ends “Thanks I’m.” Classic.
July 10, 2009 at 12:51 pm
See? That’s what it’s all about. Letting the Internet know about this stuff is one thing, but letting a friend and colleague know about it is another! I feel like my blog has purpose and meaning now!
July 16, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Just wanted to let everyone know, they are STILL at it. I received a fantastic offer to join “the nation’s top Directors and VPs of Public Relations, key executives and visionaries…for teleconference(s)” which is obviously my DREAM. I already belong to PRSA and ALA and several other legitimate professional organizations. Luckily, I Googled the web site address “Alex” offered in the e-mail and this blog was at the top of the heap. Thanks for leaving this post up!
Ironically, I am planning a trip to Atlanta in a few months. I hope to be able to spend as much time as possible with my new BFF, “Alex” and the rest of this DREAM TEAM of worker bees on the 17th Floor at 600 North Park Building, Atlanta, GA 3O328. Anyone want to come with me? We can make a field trip!
Here’s my confidence-boosting spammy e-mail (Just like most of you, I can’t seem to remember when I received that FIRST e-mail…):
—————————————————–
Hi , I was just checking back to see if you had reached a decision per my original email below. We have a couple of openings and I thought you would enjoy the group. Some of the other members include:
- AstraZeneca, Mary Lynn Carver, Global Head of Internal Communications.
- BAE Systems, Inc., Doug Coffey, VP, Communications.
- Bayer Corporation, Mark Ryan, SVP, Communications.
- BP, Neil Chapman,VP Marketing Communications.
- CIBA Vision, Brandi Robinson, Vice President, NA Communications & Public Relations.
- Disneyland Resort, Robert Doughty, VP, Communications.
- Dollar General Corp., Tawn Earnest, Senior Director of Corporate Communications.
- Dow Jones & Company, Howard Hoffman, VP, Corporate Affairs.
- Michelin North America, R Lynn Mann, Director of Public Relations, North America.
- Nestle, S.A., Niels Christiansen, VP, Public Affairs.
- Pepperidge Farm, Inc., Nan Redmond, Director, Corporate & Brand Communications.
- Time Warner Cable, Beverly Greenberg, VP, Public Affairs.
- A number of smaller company VPs of Public Relations too.
Can you take a look and get back to me? Our site is at
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com if you need additional info. Thanks and I hope you can join us .
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
17th Floor, 600 North Park Building.
Atlanta, GA 3O328
Tel. 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com
—– Original Message —–
From: Alex Parnell
To:
Subject: , question.
Hi . On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into The Public Relations Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Public Relations Summit is an invitation-only group comprising the nation’s top Directors and VPs of Public Relations, key executives and visionaries. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful PR executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform. Our site is at http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks .
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
17th Floor, 600 North Park Building.
Atlanta, GA 3O328
Tel. 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
http://www.ThePublicRelationsSummit.com
The information contained in this message is confidential and intended only for . If you have received this message in error, please delete it or mail us back if you no longer wish to receive further invites. For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as: , , ,
July 16, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Yup, they are still at it. Received mine on 6/26/2009. This one is from:
Chris Jameson
The COO Operations Summit
1200 Abernethy Road, Suite 1700
Atlanta, G.A. 30328
Chris@TheOperationsSummit.org
http://www.TheOperationsSummit.org
With all of the people on this blog with a similar invitation, we should go ahead and start a REAL operations summit!
Thank you for the blog!
July 21, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I received an “invitation-only” email for the CMO Summit. It came from Taylor Evans with the same Atlanta address, etc.
Since I use the WOT (Web of Trust) browser add-on to check for security issues before I click on links for sites / companies I don’t know, I googled “cmo-summit.org” to see WOT’s security ratings for it. No surprise that the URL didn’t show up in the search results, ergo no WOT results either. But I did find this blog. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
Clearly, do not be fooled by the hyphen in the URL and mistake it for “cmosummit.org,” which is the site for the annual CMO Summit event held by the worldwide CMO Council organization.
July 22, 2009 at 10:53 am
Thanks for the info. My COO received an email from “Chris” this past Monday and wanted me to check it out. After seeing your site I did a little more digging. I have access to Lexis Nexis with the D&B Duns Federal Employer Identification Numbers option. I looked up “The Operations Summit” and received no hits so then I looked it up by the address “Chris” gives in Atlanta GA (or G.A. as it reads on the email). I found that the company residing at that address and Suite number is called Cal Capital Inc. I Googled Cal Capital and came up with nothing directly related to the GA address. I hope this information helps to convince anyone who is not convinced already that this is not ligit.
July 23, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Just wanted to add that this company also has a “CMO Summit” to which I was invited using the exact same form letters as I see here…I figured it was suspicious, thanks for confirming!
Hi Chris. On behalf of our Board, I wanted to personally invite you into The CMO Summit because of your key role and experience.
The CMO Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the very best executives and visionaries in marketing. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful CMO’s and marketing executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform. Our site is at http://www.cmo-summit.org
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in your efforts. Here is our site as background if you could take a look and please let me know of your decision. Thanks Chris.
Sincerely,
Taylor Evans
The CMO Summit
1200 Abermathy Road, Suite 1700
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
404.592.9904 Ext 804
http://www.cmo-summit.org
Hi Chris, I was just checking back to see if you had reached a decision per my original email below. We have a couple of openings and I thought you would enjoy the group. Some of the other members include:
- Adobe Systems, Gary Kovacs, VP Product Management and Marketing.
- CB Richard Ellis, Jena Hollensteiner, National Director of Marketing.
- Dell, Praveen Asthana, Director, Enterprise Marketing.
- Dow Corning Corporation, George Toskey, Global Market Manager.
- Kodak, Kathleen McHugh, VP of Marketing and Strategy.
- Kraft Foods, Carole Irgang, SVP, Integrated Marketing Communications.
- McGraw-Hill, Katherine Malangone, Senior Director, Marketing Communications.
- Nike, Joaquin Hidalgo, VP, Global Brand Marketing.
- Novell, John Dragoon, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer.
- Sara Lee, Philippe Schaillee, VP, Marketing, Strategy, Research & Development.
- A number of smaller company CMOs too.
Can you take a look and get back to me? Our site is at http://www.cmo-summit.org if you need additional info. Thanks and I hope you can join us Chris.
Sincerely,
Taylor Evans
The CMO Summit
1200 Abermathy Road, Suite 1700
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
404.592.9904 Ext 804
http://www.cmo-summit.org
July 24, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I received the same email from Taylor Evans at cio-summit.org. I deleted the first email as I figured it was spam, and then was curious when I got the second email and saw that yes, this is a scam. When the website they have up is almost identical to the email you receive, it practically screams ‘fishy.’ Glad to see this blog up and running.
July 31, 2009 at 12:56 pm
+1
A follow-up email from “Taylor Evans” just like the rest.
It seemed odd and suspicious. My Google research led me here, and then to the DELETE button of my email.
Thanks.
July 25, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I received a similar email from “Gene”. I appreciate this blog post and will spread the word to others regarding this phishing scheme.
July 31, 2009 at 11:16 am
Theres still out there. Thanks for the info…the follow up almost got me. Smart guys. The Public Relation Summit lives on.
August 5, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Whatever this scam organization is, they are definitely still operating. The flavor of the scam they sent me today is Chief Operating Officer Summit. I wonder what purchased list they got my name off of. They apparently paid too much =). “Chris” should get a real job.
August 5, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I got the “Gene Martin” invite today, and can’t tell you how lucky I was to have found this blog. You see, a few years ago I was a member of a very real, very exclusive group called the “Customer Experience Councils,” and so I thought this Customer Service Summit was a legitimate offer from someone who had heard about my experience with the councils. I knew when I visited the site that something wasn’t right. (By the way, they did end up putting SSL up, but it’s totally shoddy.) But thanks to Google and you all, I was spared the trouble of losing any more time/energy/money to these jokers.
Thanks again everyone.
August 6, 2009 at 10:57 am
This scam is still live. The latest was The “Customer Relations Summit”, but the form letter is basically the same.
August 11, 2009 at 11:36 am
Thanks for the blog entry – it looks like “Chris Jameson” is still at it, except now he’s writing on behalf of “The COO Operations Summit” aka “theoperationssummit.org”. Frankly, after reading this entry, I didn’t even bother to do any more research on them. The email sounded fishy – “the best executives in the business,” and all the rest. Sure, I’m a COO, and sure, I think I’m pretty good, but honestly, can I hobnob about MY issues with the likes of these other COO’s that are listed?
- BlueCross Blueshield of Tennessee, Judy Slagle, GBEM VP and Chief of Staff.
- Cisco Systems, Tricia Baker, Director.
- Netflix, Andrew Rendich, VP Operations.
(and many others).
So, adding my comment here to help Google keep other recipients quickly informed of this latest twist from the BizSummit folks.
Oh, and one other thing that was interesting – the email was in the form of a reply/forward from his “original” messages … which listed everything you’d see in a regular email reply EXCEPT the date originally sent.
Clearly a shady organization of some kind, and the research y’all have done above confirms it. Thanks again for the blog!
August 14, 2009 at 6:15 pm
My mom, an elementary school computer teacher, received her invite to the CIO Summit via her school email. After visiting the site she called me to confirm that this was a scam and wondered how they got her information. Made me wonder too, other than phishing the school district website or purchasing a list from an educational supplier she can’t figure that one out.
She’s forwarding the email to her IT folks and asking them to block anything from that domain (or similar domains) and blocking their IP too… Gotta love it!
August 21, 2009 at 11:38 am
Just to keep the status updates going, I got one today from “Taylor Events.” Same schtick, but for “The CMO Summit.” Which, by the way, there is a legitimate conference that goes by the exact same name and has ALMOST the same URL. Only difference? The one in the email is hyphenated.
September 1, 2009 at 11:27 pm
This is quite interesting. I was contacted by someone who recently received an email from Chris Jameson of the COO Operations Summit. He noticed the names listed as members and decided to call one of them. He happened to call my boss (who is currently out of town) and the call was forwarded to me. My boss actually did sign up with them 2 years ago and is a member and although he never attended any of their summits, he did attend several webinars. Although he felt that they really were not beneficial to him and our business, he doesn’t feel as though it was a scam. I guess we will never really know since he didn’t attend any summits.
September 11, 2009 at 11:33 am
This is creepy!!!! He had to have gotten my info off my work website. This is the first e-mail I have recieved from him and he claims it is the second. He acts like I have communicated with him so I began to snoop to see what this is all about. The sneaky thing is he has his web address as a .net, but if you google just the company name you come up with multiple websites claiming how amazing they are, but they are all just .com. I searched and included the guys name in the search and bingo! I found this site. Thank you soooooo much!
Here is what they are sending now:
Hi Cyndi, I was just checking back to see if you had reached a decision
per my original email below. We have a couple of openings and I thought
you would enjoy the group. Some of the other members include:
- Best Buy, Julie Beth McFall, Director, Customer Experience.
- Charles Schwab, Mark Helliker, SVP.
- Harris Corp, James Sakaguchi, VP Global Services & Support.
- Midmark, Ron Gehret, Director of Customer Experience.
- Safe Auto Insurance Company, Pamela Pond, VP Service.
- SunTrust Bank, Sheri Malmgren, VP/Client Experience.
- A number of smaller company VPs and Directors of Customer Service too.
Can you take a look and get back to me? Our site is at
http://www.CustomerServiceSummit.net if you need additional info. Thanks and I
hope you can join us Cyndi.
Sincerely,
Gene Martin
The Customer Service Summit
1200 Abernathy Road, Fl. 17
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
803-712-3027
http://www.CustomerServiceSummit.net
—– Original Message —–
From: Gene Martin
To: Cyndi Blue
Subject: Cyndi, question.
Hi Cyndi. On behalf of our board, I wanted to personally invite you into
the Customer Service Summit because of your key role and experience.
The Customer Service Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the
very best VP’s and Directors of Customer Service, executives and
visionaries. We meet monthly by teleconference to exchange what is
working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum
with dedicated groups of other successful customer service executives
whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in
your efforts. Here is our site as background at
http://www.CustomerServiceSummit.net if you could take a look and please let me
know of your decision. Thanks Cyndi.
Sincerely,
Gene Martin
The Customer Service Summit
1200 Abernathy Road, Fl. 17
Atlanta, Georgia 30328
404 – 592 – 9904 Extension 804
http://www.CustomerServiceSummit.net
He went on to have all of my info about me from my company listed below. What he doesn’t know is that I am a family advocate and this who thing does not apply to me. It is scary what people will come up with these days. I hope someone stops him for invasion of privacy!!!
September 11, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Got ANOTHER e-mail from my favorite person, ever. Oh, yay. 
He “first” e-mailed me in July, claiming that it was a follow up. I never responded to that e-mail. Now, he’s e-mailing me AGAIN to see if I’ve “reached a decision on becoming a part of the PR Summit” Um, yes, I did and it’s NO WAY. Mostly because the PR Summit is a crock of (insert choice words here). Here’s the e-mail:
Hi ___, have you reached a decision on becoming a part of The PR Summit? Here are some of the upcoming dates and presenters. I thought you would really enjoy exchanging ideas and best practices with your peers by teleconference.
Our next few meetings and presenters: 09/02/09, 10/07/09, 11/04/09, 12/02/09.
- Mark Cox, Director of Public Communications, City of Chesapeake, VA.
- Steve Swasey, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Netflix.
- Deirdre Breakenridge, Director of Communications, PFS.
- Sumaya Kazi, Senior Manager, Social Media, Global Communications, Oracle.
I have placed a full schedule on our site for you and hope you can join us, thanks C___.
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
Tel. 404-592-9904 Ext. 804
http://www.thepublicrelationssummit.net
The information contained in this message is confidential and intended only for C___. If you have received this message in error, please delete it or mail us back if you no longer wish to receive further invites. Our postal address if needed is 1200 Abermathy Rd #1700, Atlanta GA 3O328. For my records in case any follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as C___, E___ c___@___.org (6___) ___-___
September 15, 2009 at 2:04 am
Hi all,
Just received two very suspicious and possibly related phone calls for a “CIO Summit”… I suspect someone lse has taken the scam discussed above and run with it in a new form.
For information, they are running this in New Zealand, and paid premium rates to call my NZ cell number. They are using the names of New Zealand Post and Telecom NZ to lend credibility to their ‘event’. Everything else about it screams phishing attach or scam.
Anyway – good luck to everyone who gets involved with these people.
Cheers,
Mike
October 27, 2009 at 10:55 am
I received yet another email from ALEX PARNELL about the PR Summit.
Question to you Alex: Why are you not listed in LinkedIn? Are you a privacy seeking PR person?
Alex Parnell
===============================
Hi ______________, is now a better time to reach out to you in regards to the
Public Relations Summit? You received a request on behalf of our Board
due to your key role in the PR field and I’m curious to know if a
decision has been made.
The Public Relations Summit is an invitation-only group comprised of the
very best executives and visionaries in PR. We meet monthly by
teleconference to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and
ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other
successful VPs and key executives whose only agenda is to help each other
outperform. Our site is at http://www.thepublicrelationssummit.com
I am certain you will find the experience both enjoyable and useful in
your efforts. Please take a look and let me know of your decision. Thanks,
Sincerely,
Alex Parnell
The Public Relations Summit
(803) 712-3316
http://www.thepublicrelationssummit.com
The information contained in this message is intended for ______________
If you don’t want further invites please mail back to cease. Our postal
address if needed is 1200 Abermathy Rd 1700, Atlanta GA 3O328. For my
records in case follow-up is needed, I show your contact information as
_______________________________
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What am I doing now?
- RyanDeschamps: @juliaweir I'm awesome. :) What do you need?
- RyanDeschamps: @hemsgems Sorry for the delay. If you would like to participate, it's on Thursday at 7pm. I just need a direct message with your email.
- RyanDeschamps: @laurenoostveen I'm definitely interested - just need to confirm that I can make it!
September 6, 2006 at 2:30 pm
got the initial invite (which i just tossed as spam), and then a personal followup note from ‘chris’. did sound very strange, so googled. thanks for this blog – otherwise i would be wondering too
July 6, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Likewise. The personal followup almost had me thinking it was legit, though still not up my alley. Thanks for doing the research for me!
July 6, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Oh by the way. Mine was from a guy named “Gene Martin” not Chris but all the same principles applied.
August 10, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Me too…after the follow-up I was thinking it might actually be legit, their website does look professional… If I hadn’t found this I might have been suckered in!
Thanks for the blog!
August 12, 2009 at 7:23 am
I just had a follow-up email come through that made me wonder whether this was legit (though I wrote asking why they were interested in me, a film historian, to be on the panel; maybe some sort of media expertise was all I could figure!). Now I see that my suspicions were right and that it is just some sort of phishing scam (I mentioned in my reply to “Alex Parnell” that I wasn’t convinced this contact wasn’t some sort of phishing scam and wanted proof from him that it wasn’t; will be interesting to see what is sent next!). Thanks to all of those who’ve contributed to this blog! Yes, the “Invitation-Only Summit” with the “Public Relations Summit” scam is still alive and well and sending follow-up notices to those it contacts! Lucky I just started a new bank account with identity theft protection (not that I’ve given out any debit/credit card numbers, of course!).
October 19, 2009 at 10:54 am
I’ll echo the sentiments of everyone else and say “thank you” for this blog. I ignored the first several emails from “Gene Martin”, but when I got another one this morning as a “personal follow-up” it caught my attention and I Googled it. Your blog is the only good information I could find.
Thanks!