Tuesday, September 12, 2017

When Great Gatsby cosplay goes terribly wrong

Some magnificent bastard is scamming wannabee start-up entrepreneurs, selling $3500 and $6500 tix to Exclusive Society Soirées where they can network with Venture Capitalists and Investor Angels, sealing deals in a soft-focus milieu of champagne and nose-candy. The VCs and IAs get to slip past the bouncers almost for free, much as in Ladies' Night at a Courtenay-Strip titty bar.
Another Kiwi is refused
entry to the Yale Club

New York Private Equity Forum hosts America’s best investor-attended national funding venues for early and later-stage companies.In light of the recognition, the Forum has received applauds from the investment community and entrepreneurs seeking capital.Equity forums are exclusive invitation-only events designed to assemble a select group of business visionaries, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, investment professionals, and money managers. In addition to presenting " one-of-a-kind " private investment opportunities, this prestigious event at the Yale Club New York is designed to be an ideal setting for new business development, exchange of ideas, creation of deal flow, location of capital sources and ultra-high-end networking.
Give them all the applauds!
The afternoon program, ending at 5:30PM, will provide ample time for effective networking, breakout sessions and one-on-one meetings with the senior management of presenting companies. A gala private reception will immediately follow the day’s program. Guests will enjoy first-class networking and Live Jazz along with a great selection of wines and hors d’oeuvres.
The whole thing reads like Baron Merlona's Private Club, all Lear Jets and cigars and well-bred hookers cortisones courtesans, except the Baron's Club was the aspirational grift of a dumbarse bumblefuck who wants to think of himself as a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel without putting in the hard yards of actually scoundrelling; whereas the New York Private Equity Forum is a real working scam. They have evidently hired a conference room at the Yale Club, and therefore cite that desirable address as their headquarters, which is a nice touch. My censorious disapprobation is mingled with schadenfreud on behalf of the suckers, and annoyance that we didn't think of the grift ourselves, here at the Riddled Experimental Ethics Laboratory.


There have been 67 of these Fora... not bad for an entity that sprang from nowhere six months ago, in the manner of a quantum fluctuation birthed from the forehead of Zeus. Whoever could be the instigator of the Equity Forum? They have anonymised the domain registration...


...NO WAIT, it's just another pseudopod of the OMICS skinwalkers. The phone number resolves to that of OMICS, and various LinkedIn accounts link it to the company's gombeens and cockwombles. Evidently CEO Gedela -- Ersatz Haderach of the Open-Access Revolution -- is not content with the income from the parasitical-publishing and mockademic-meeting rackets, and aspires to some of that sweet Hamptons-scented Money Manager dosh.

So Messrs. Trahison & Clerisy, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths (also Riddled's legal advisors) are all agog to hear from this dude, Sr Counsel for NYPEF and OMICS and its IMedPub subsidiary...
"Not so fast," says the reader, paying closer attention to Mr Vattikoti's affiliation. "We know of Allied Academies, and Pulsus Group or CME Society, assimilated into the company's congressive empire in the hope of shedding the stink of the OMICS reputation while they clog our email with spam for their production-line cookie-cutter scamferences. Not to forget Conferenceseries. But who is this EuroSciCon?"
an internationally renowned medical peer-review publisher and conferences organizer established in the year 1984 publishes and hosts the work of researchers in a manner that exemplifies the highest standards in research integrity.
Who indeed? EuroSciCon / EuroSciConOnline / LifeSciEvent purport to be English, operating out of a virtual-office mail-drop in High Barnet. But sure enough, these details are as corroborative fraudulent as ever, and once again the company is a fuckpuppet for Hyderabad's finest. Whatever EuroSciCon may have been for the 15 years after Shara Cohen founded it, OMICS have kept only the name (and the corporate repute), restuffing its skin with their usual business model of drowning the academic world in Alt-Facts mendacity so that legitimate conferences disappear in the noise.
Recognition at last! 'Suzan Brown' is well-
versed in my "expertise and experience" in
neurology, though not in my name & gender

The IMedPub e-address schandra@imedpub.com usefully leads not only to this new acquisition, but also to meetingint.org, confirming it as yet another tentacle.

The pursuit of further tentacles is left as an exercise for the reader. I just want to say, Kudos to whoever came up with the name of "Pubicon" as a small Indian on-line publisher with only seven "American Journals of W", two "British Journals of X", two "International Journals of Y" and one "Global Journal of Z" -- though that was before OMICS acquired them.

5 comments:

Trevor said...

There are only titty bars in Courtenay Place? I is disappoint.

Smut Clyde said...

Very strict zoning laws. Out here in the 'burbs we have to make our own entertainment.

rhwombat said...

I've never quite seen why small birds should be subject to erogenous zoning laws, srtick or lax.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Creation of Deal Flow is one hell of a phrase.

Smut Clyde said...

The layout of our lounge is all about the Creation of Deal Flow.

Someone else likes this talk of "deal flow and ultra-high-end networking"!
AMMA Member Firm network provides an ideal setting for new business development, exchange of ideas, creation of deal flow and ultra-high-end networking.

These AMMA people occupy a slightly different niche in the scammosphere; they specialise in affinity shenanigans, posing as accountants themselves while encouraging accountancy firms to 'diversify their investment' in bleeding-edge tech start-ups (while taking their percentage even as the start-ups stop-down). But they are happy to steal phrasing from the Equity Forum bafflegab.