Sunday, May 1, 2016

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.

3 comments:

  1. Additional information on Dr. Henry Lee and possible "misleading" may be found in the a 2007 trial in Los Angeles.

    On June 7 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that in a murder case in which Dr. Henry Lee was scheduled to testify, the judge found that a witness, "...testified under oath that she saw Lee 'manipulate, take, and now either conceal or destroy evidence'" and the judge would allow testimony about the object in the trial to question Lee's credibility.

    See: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/07/local/me-spector7

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    Replies
    1. There is no such quotation in the article now posted at the url given. Instead, the article reads as follows:

      "An attorney who earlier had said she saw famous forensic scientist Henry C. Lee remove an object from the crime scene refused to testify Wednesday in the Phil Spector murder trial, sparking an intense confrontation between her lawyer and Judge Larry Paul Fidler.
      "Sara Caplan, who represented Spector in 2003, said she was bound by law and ethics codes not to testify against her former client.
      "Fidler said he needed time to decide whether he would order Caplan to testify and that he would return to the matter Monday. The trial, being held at Los Angeles County Superior Court, will be off for the rest of the week.
      "Fidler said that if he ordered her to testify and she refused, "make no mistake, I will hold her in contempt. In almost 25 years I have never held an attorney in contempt. I take this extremely seriously and think she is making a mistake."

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  2. Well, I can confirm having received the multiple spam from Dalian. As for the "attendees", I do know Mathias Gaertner, and it would seem unlikely that he would go out to Dalian for this sort of thing. Incidentally, the University of Duesseldorf (as quoted) is in Germany, not in Belgium.
    Hope this helps...
    Best regards
    Rolf von Roessing

    ReplyDelete