Business owners from Kalamazoo say they were targeted by a scam impersonating the Grand Rapids Camping, Travel & RV Show at the DeVos Place.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Last year, Alexis Graham and Reed Zapf took a leap and started up their gourmet mini pancake business, Pancake Paws & Co. While they were busy all summer, they started to slow down in the winter, and in December, they got an email that they thought would kick them back into gear.
“It was a request for an event in Grand Rapids at the DeVos Place,” said Graham. “So I was super excited. It’s a huge venue. I was like, oh my gosh, you know, they saw us on social media. They wanted to contact us and showcase our food at their event.”
That event was the Grand Rapids Camper, Travel and RV Show from January 15 to the 18th. The email the two were sent used the show’s official logo and offered a spot at the show for $100 a day, but it turned out to be not real.
Graham says she was able to spot the warning signs before it was too late.
“The payment form that they asked for was kind of what gave me the first red flag,” said Graham. “They requested to be paid through cash at Venmo or Apple Pay. So I was like, okay, that’s a bit odd.”
While they never sent any money to the person pretending to be part of the show’s company, ShowSpan, Carolyn Alt, its executive vice president, says she feels for the couple.
“We hate that it happened,” said Alt. “They did reach out to us, which was when we started, you know, doing our due diligence and our research, and certainly said this is absolutely not us.”
Alt said that ShowSpan will never reach out to potential vendors through a personal Gmail account, like what happened to Graham and Zapf, and charge vendors for the entire show rather than per day.
“You can hang up the phone, close your email, and call the show directly,” said Alt. “Which is what they did, which was perfect. So we were there to help them and hope that in the future, we can do business with them.”
