Specialized Events, Inc. Women's Life and Style ExpoMy Health and Wellness Expo Fraudulent event promoter scams gullible home party and small business vendors Gold Canyon Arizona

This promoter claimed to have held a successful "Women's Life and Style Expo" and/or "My Health and Wellness Expo" event for either 9, 10, or 13 years running (it was different in every invitation that he sent out to vendors) in the north Colorado area. He collected thousands of dollars from unsuspecting small businesses and home party vendors, some of whom drove from out of state to attend and had to pay additional costs for hotel stays and travel. He then did the absolute minimum of advertising that he could possibly get away with, held the event in a small community center, and had a turnout of zero (yes, I said zero) actual attendees.

Costs for vendors ranged from $150 for a single space if you signed up just a couple weeks before and grabbed one of the "last 8 booth spaces," to $645 for a double space at full price if you signed up months in advance, prior to his drastic discounts as a last-ditch effort to try and grab as much money as possible. He charges $20 less if you use a check, because that way you have little to no recourse for getting your money back. Using a credit card at least affords the possibility that the credit card company will agree to chargeback for fraud.

The event was only advertised in the newspapers 3 days in advance, and only on weekdays. Online ads posted at free event listing sites were often incorrect (listed the wrong location, wrong dates, wrong city) and have in many cases been shut down due to large numbers of complaints by site users. Several people who wanted to attend (because family or friends were running a booth there) actually never made it to the event because they coudn't find any information online about it doing a general search for events in the area. Physical signage was only put up in a 1-block radius on the day of the event (not before) and did not list location, date, or time. Email blasts were supposedly sent out, but only one such list has been documented, and its 3500-person distribution only has a 15% open rate.

The community center where this promoter rented space had blocked off a portion of the basketball courts with partitions, leading people who were visiting the center for exercise classes or pick-up games to believe that the event was closed to the public. Those people brave enough to take a peek inside the area (all 15 of them) all stated that they had no idea this event was going on until they got nosey and looked around the wall. Shortly after such visitors began trickling in (about 2 hours after the event start time), the promoter requested that the basketball pick-up game going on nearby be shut down, which resulted in preventing any further visitors from stopping in, since those people who had been wasting time while their kids played basketball then had to take the kids home.

The event was billed as having "over 75" booths, seminars, freebies, and more. There were no seminars, no classes, no goodie bag giveaways, and less than 30 booths, most of whom packed up in disgust 2 hours early. The vendors petitioned to have their money refunded due to the unbelievably poor turnout, but the promoter not only refused, he actually laughed at the vendor representatives who went to speak to him about the complaints.

This company has a history (documented in many places online, including the BBB, Facebook, and yelp) of falsely biliing their events and conning small business owners out of hundreds of dollars each to set up booths in odd venues with little to no attendance, not only wasting their money but also precious time that could have been spent promoting their products at REAL events.