The international GP society has warned members that scammers have made fake websites for the upcoming European conference in Dublin.
Australian GPs travelling to the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA) Europe conference next month should be wary of scam websites and emails from fraudsters.
In an email to members earlier this week, the international association said it was aware of several websites impersonating the official conference, which will take place in Dublin from September 25 to 28.
Given that the conference is specifically targeted at GPs in European countries – unlike last year’s international WONCA world conference in Sydney – it’s unlikely that Australian GPs would have fallen victim to the scam.
The only legitimate site for the conference is woncaeurope2024.org.
The Medical Republic, being intrepid investigative journalists (admittedly with some time on our hands), identified at least one of the scam sites.
One immediate giveaway was that something wasn’t on the level was the fact that the scam site was hosted on a different domain to official WONCA sites.
The next was the ticket pricing, which started at €750 EUR ($1235 AUD) for students and went up to €1550 EUR ($2553 AUD) for late registration for a regular delegate.
And those amounts were not including a 23% tax.
Tickets for the real conference start at €150 EUR ($247 AUD) for students and top out at €950 EUR ($1565 AUD).
Related
The 2024 Asia Pacific WONCA regional conference – which includes Australia – will start in Singapore later this week, while the biennial WONCA Rural conference will be on in Cape Town, South Africa, in September.
There won’t be another WONCA world conference until September next year, with Lisbon in Portugal set to play host.
