take it as a compliment – your brand is obviously very strong and must have pulling power if these weasels want to steal it …

Hope it works out okay for you

Lorcan Malone

Thanks for your comments.

This would appear to be a low end (IMHO) scam. The guy simply swiped our content from our web site and then used this to run an event. I say low end because he left a phone number (I called him and we spoke) and an email (and I emailed him and he replied!) so there was no real attempt to do this in a professional manner!

These vents were being run in the Digital Marketing Institute name and when I called he stated that he was “partnering” with us!

It looks like, 24 hours after I have found the problem, that much of it is cleared up (ie the pages are gone) except for this on http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/171663

As you can see it bears our name and logo, which is not good.

The Gardai have been on to me and they tell me that they have spoken to brownpapertickets.com and that they are in the process of removing it.

Thanks again

Anthony

I had some experience of online brand hijacking in the past and it is all to easy to do and quite difficult to take action against.

Are there actual events being run, trading on the DMI’s good name, or are they purely attempts to defraud unsuspecting people buying tickets through the sites named? What I saw was the transaction being listed on well known advertising and sales sites mentioning our brand for credibility and often using a sophisticated fake ‘brand’ site to support it. By coincidence the two main cities used were London and Rome. Similar to you, I found that some of the listing sites were more willing to take action than others but the UK police were more interested than the Gardai, who could only take action if an actual fraudulent crime had been committed. Anything less is a civil rather than criminal matter.

The giveaways were phone numbers answered by people with little knowledge of the transaction (and with poor English so I would assume the numbers were virtual ones), address details that were close to but not genuine ones and pricing that was below the going rate.
We were fortunate in having a very informed and forceful legal consul in the US who, were required, could have fake sites and listings removed with an email or letter, but in general the legal route is a slow and expensive one to take.

Can you let us know how this works out as there are important lessons for all small businesses with an online international reputation.

best of luck,
Brendan

in the meantime, the Garda have been on to a couple of the “event organisers” (ie the hosting companies) and we are trying to remove everything.

Thanks again
Anthony

I would turn it into a positive, turn up at the advertised event as the representative from the Digital Marketing Institute and give your course content. At the end of your presentation, tell the audience what occured and that you would not see your organisations reputation hijacked like this which is why you turned up and gave the course free of charge (you havent received any of the fee although the audience did pay, maybe offer them a discount on a future course).

The PR and reputation bonus will be outstanding, everyone will tweet, blog etc about it.

Best of luck
Kieran