Exposing the Fake Awards Scam: How to Protect Your Business from Deceptive Recognition

Nettyawards.com and Thenettyawards.com watch out messages coming from these two

A bunch of Indian scammers with flip-flops from Mumbai, Jaipur and Uttar Pradesh send unsolicited emails and filling out contact forms that your business has been “nominated” and you should act fast (the typical marketing principle of urgency) because they need to meet their deadline to “finalize the nominations/press coverage list”. The downside is this fake nomination has a $495 fee (the scammers can live for 2-3 months on that money).

Now if you’re smart enough and do a little digging you will find these are known scammers who are already blacklisted and I doubt the victims will ever get even a link after payment. They fake their identities by using pics and names of Caucasian ladies. For all I know, the imposters could very possible be males named Vikrahm, Ajay, or Sanjay.

Disclaimer: Those inboxes could be also legitimate inboxes from these websites hijacked from scammers but that is too improbable. If this was the case the scammers wouldn’t ask the exact amount of a listing you can make on these websites. They would ask something less and via private communication e.g. Skype, Telegram. I think it’s legit to the point those scams are originating on the websites in question and communicated from domain emails. If the victims are lucky to convert payments to listings I seriously doubt it. If that was the case there should be some historical listings on the website, e.g. 2023 Nominations etc. If it looks like a scam and it smells like a scam then it is a scam.

https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/sarah.levine@thenettyawards.com

https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/eva.cohen@nettyawards.com

This guy has written an article about their scheme

Don’t fall for it.