This is a public service announcement
May 30, 2013
A few days ago I was contacted by an American brother who had recently received an email inviting him to preach at a conference in London. The email, as many do, lacked a little coherence, but was addressed directly to him and essentially invited him, at fairly short notice, to preach at a conference in London. The wording of the email seemed a little odd to me, so I checked out the website, a well-developed, quite extensive and fairly typical online churchy environment containing a stack of preached material, some of which I listened to briefly. It was evangelicalism-lite but not full-blown weirdness, so I for a moment wondered if perhaps this brother might have an opportunity to do good, though I warned him that - knowing him and knowing the kind of scene this church might be involved in - I was very surprised that they had approached him.
Now, despite what some think, not everyone in the UK knows everyone else, so I could not assure him that all this was legitimate, though I found it odd that they were approaching him with so little time and that the grand conference was not being advertised prominently. My primary counsel was to proceed with extreme caution, especially with regard to three notes in the email: the Lord's alleged direction, the pressure to respond fairly quickly with the promise of a rapid response on their side in terms of payments, and the suggestion that "binding documents" needed to be signed.
A tentative response to this first email from my American brother brought about a rapid answer (which may even have included a phone call) containing a three page 'contract' offering all kinds of good things, including first class travel and the kind of fee (some of it in advance) that I can assure you would be rare in the UK among any churches with sense. However, all this would be forthcoming once the obtained the "relevant travel documents and Entry Clearance." Further contact identified a named individual in the British Border Agency who should be contacted in order to procure a Tier 5 entry visa.
My friend contacted me again, now much more suspicious. I pointed out that while Tier 5 entry visas exist, anyone visiting the UK should be aware that government bureaucracy is essentially faceless and distant - it contains no named individuals. The other giveaway was that the named individual lived three doors away from the alleged church building and had the following fascinating email address: ukbaofficialdirect@[somethinggeneric].com.
I wondered if the church existed, and someone was using the names of those involved as cover. Further checks on the church website revealed that there were no immediate contact details and their Google map suspiciously prevented anyone using streetview to actually look at the building they claimed to be in. A more careful re-reading of the site and emails revealed American spellings of certain words - a bit of a giveaway even today. Checking the UK online and telephone directories suggested that the church in question actually did not exist. It suggested that the whole thing - including the initial website - was a scam. I suspect that, had the brother in question gone ahead, he would have found himself wiring a not insignificant fee to the named individual in order to process and expedite his application, after which not much more communication would have been forthcoming. Further checking revealed very similar though not identical scams which can be considered here and here. (Incidentally, you have to love the fact that one of these guys thought that a $10k speaking fee seemed "high for a church but does fall within my standard fee structure [at least for domestic events], so it didn't seem too unusual at the time" - there are different worlds out there!)
I offer this as a warning to brothers in the US: I was impressed, for all the wrong reasons, with this set-up. There was a measure of development and coherence in the online presence and in the initial approach that suggested something legitimate and that chimed sufficiently with the attitude and actions of certain churches to seem genuine, but not far beneath the surface the cracks began to show. Should you find yourself approached in anything like this way, I suggest that (at the very least) you contact credible friends in the UK to help assess it, and that - though you may lose the opportunity to exercise your well-meaning desires to invest something in the work of the kingdom here - you look very carefully before you leap.
Now, despite what some think, not everyone in the UK knows everyone else, so I could not assure him that all this was legitimate, though I found it odd that they were approaching him with so little time and that the grand conference was not being advertised prominently. My primary counsel was to proceed with extreme caution, especially with regard to three notes in the email: the Lord's alleged direction, the pressure to respond fairly quickly with the promise of a rapid response on their side in terms of payments, and the suggestion that "binding documents" needed to be signed.
A tentative response to this first email from my American brother brought about a rapid answer (which may even have included a phone call) containing a three page 'contract' offering all kinds of good things, including first class travel and the kind of fee (some of it in advance) that I can assure you would be rare in the UK among any churches with sense. However, all this would be forthcoming once the obtained the "relevant travel documents and Entry Clearance." Further contact identified a named individual in the British Border Agency who should be contacted in order to procure a Tier 5 entry visa.
My friend contacted me again, now much more suspicious. I pointed out that while Tier 5 entry visas exist, anyone visiting the UK should be aware that government bureaucracy is essentially faceless and distant - it contains no named individuals. The other giveaway was that the named individual lived three doors away from the alleged church building and had the following fascinating email address: ukbaofficialdirect@[somethinggeneric].com.
I wondered if the church existed, and someone was using the names of those involved as cover. Further checks on the church website revealed that there were no immediate contact details and their Google map suspiciously prevented anyone using streetview to actually look at the building they claimed to be in. A more careful re-reading of the site and emails revealed American spellings of certain words - a bit of a giveaway even today. Checking the UK online and telephone directories suggested that the church in question actually did not exist. It suggested that the whole thing - including the initial website - was a scam. I suspect that, had the brother in question gone ahead, he would have found himself wiring a not insignificant fee to the named individual in order to process and expedite his application, after which not much more communication would have been forthcoming. Further checking revealed very similar though not identical scams which can be considered here and here. (Incidentally, you have to love the fact that one of these guys thought that a $10k speaking fee seemed "high for a church but does fall within my standard fee structure [at least for domestic events], so it didn't seem too unusual at the time" - there are different worlds out there!)
I offer this as a warning to brothers in the US: I was impressed, for all the wrong reasons, with this set-up. There was a measure of development and coherence in the online presence and in the initial approach that suggested something legitimate and that chimed sufficiently with the attitude and actions of certain churches to seem genuine, but not far beneath the surface the cracks began to show. Should you find yourself approached in anything like this way, I suggest that (at the very least) you contact credible friends in the UK to help assess it, and that - though you may lose the opportunity to exercise your well-meaning desires to invest something in the work of the kingdom here - you look very carefully before you leap.
