BIT Global Group's Next Flaky Forensics Conference

BIT Global Group is notable for the scope and intensity of its spam promoting what appear to be parodies of academic or professional conferences. The latest email "on behalf of the organizing committee" cordially invited me "to attend BIT’s 3rd International Congress of Forensics & Police Tech Expo 2016, which will be held during October 27-29, 2016 at International Conference Center, Dalian, China."

The organizing committee (or, as the conference's website designates it, the program committee) consists of one individual, Dr. Xiaodan Mei, President of BIT Group Global Ltd., China. But the "Advisory Board Members" are "coming soon," and already, "the Plenary Session will invite a distinguished international panel including Dr. Henry Lee and many others to talk about the impact of recent forensic scientific and technological breakthroughs around the world."

Indeed, if the website is accurate, the "Renowned Speakers of WCF-2016" who have signed on are

• "Dr. Henry C. Lee, Chief Emeritus for Scientific Services, University of New Haven, USA" and
• "Dr. John Zheng Wang, Professor and Director of Certificate Programs, California State University [Long Beach], USA,"

Postscript

On May 16, 24, and 29, 2016, Ms. Cherry Dong, Organizing Committee of the Forensics & Police Tech Expo 2016, advised me that

I’m writing to follow up my last invitation letter several weeks ago, it is regretful we couldn’t receive your reply. Now we would like to extend our cordially invitation to you again to join the BIT’s 3rd International Congress of Forensics & Police Tech Expo 2016 ... . Forensic science has attracted enormous attentions ... . Therefore, we establish this focused event ... So please kindly inform us if you are available to give us a presentation in the conference, it will be highly appreciated you can give us a prompt reply with a title and brief (3-5 sentences) summary on your recent work in the area.

As of June 13, 22, and July 3, 2016, the wording changed to

How are you doing? I am Cherry, the Program Coordinator ... . I am writing the letter to make sure if you have received my letter previously, it is about the conference: WCF-2016 which will be held during October 27-29, 2016 ... . Maybe there some problems with my mailbox ... . Now we have invited some distinguished experts including Dr. Henry Lee and Dr. John Zheng Wang and many others ... . In the past two congresses, we have invited more than 300 worldwide leading experts, famous police officers, and law practitioners ...

In June, the renowned speakers list had grown with the addition of

• Mathias Gaertner, Publicly Accredited and Sworn in Expert Witness for Information Technology, Germany
• Eric Kreuter, a Partner in the Financial Advisory Services Group at Marks Paneth LLP
• Erik Laykin, Managing Director, Duff & Phelps LLC
• Frank Prieels, Professor, University of Duesseldorf, Belgium
• Andre Stuart, CEO, 21st Century Forensic Animation
• Linda Xiao, Professional Officer (Technical), University of Technology, Australia.

and by early July, another keynote speech, from Raymond Hsieh, Professor and Director of Justice Studies, Department of Criminal Justice, California University of Pennsylvania, was added to the schedule.

For more information on BIT's "congresses" and practices, see Wikipedia and Flaky Academic Conferences.