Dinosaurs at Ķīpsala, horse rides, a fossil dig for the kids. A fake dinosaur festival in Riga has been doing the rounds online, and it isn’t happening.
Scammers built a slick website for a two-week “World of Dinosaurs” festival at the Ķīpsala Exhibition Centre in Riga, plus Liepāja and Daugavpils. The venue only found out about it this week, and CERT.lv, Latvia’s national IT security team, blocked the site on 13 October, LSM reports.
Key facts
- Fake event: “World of Dinosaurs”, billed for Ķīpsala in Riga plus the Liepāja and Daugavpils Olympic Centres
- Ķīpsala’s management learned about it on 12 October; the hall is being set up for a different exhibition
- CERT.lv blocked the festival site on 13 October
- Separate scam: a fake Datamed site took more than €66,000 from at least 18 people, State Police say
- Both fake sites are now offline
Is the dinosaur festival at Ķīpsala real?
No. Ķīpsala never heard of it until this week. The site promised an unforgettable family holiday and slapped real, big venues on the poster to look legit.
“The scale of the event was ambitious,” said Ķīpsala director Jānis Zvirbulis. Big halls, big promises, nothing behind them.
How did the fake Datamed site take €66,000?
Same playbook, sharper teeth. A clone of Datamed, the medical data portal, showed up in Google sponsored ads. People searching for the real thing clicked the ad, typed in their login details, and the scammers walked straight into their online banking.
Datamed gets around 10,000 unique visitors a day. Board chair Iluta Riekstiņa says that traffic is exactly why it got picked. State Police put the damage at more than €66,000 from at least 18 people. That money went to the Datamed clone, not the dinosaur site.
How do you spot a fake website in Latvia?
- Read the address letter by letter. One extra or missing character is your red flag.
- Bookmark the sites you actually use and skip the sponsored result at the top.
- Read every Smart-ID request before you confirm it. Didn’t start a login? Don’t approve it.
- Already got hit? Report it to the State Police.
Black Friday and Christmas sales are coming, and so is fake-shop season. Latvia’s digital front has been busy this year, from the CSDD cyberattack in August to these cheap clones.
Real Riga events come with a venue that knows they exist, like last weekend’s Open House Riga tours. Before you pay for anything, check the venue’s own site. Every time.
Stay sharp, Riga.
Photo: Expo Hall at Ķīpsala — Olgerts V / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
