Thursday, January 21, 2021
Last week we learned that a Korean investigative reporting team submitted several fake nominations to the 2020 Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, and those nominations were recognized by the judges with Stevie Awards. Last week we rescinded those awards.
The reporters went to great lengths to disguise their work. (They paid more than $1,000 in entry fees for their nominations.) While we are embarrassed that this has happened, we have pointed out to them that no one in the real world would do this. What purpose would it serve to pay hundreds of dollars in entry fees, and go to the work of preparing and submitting fraudulent nominations? No person or company in the real world would jump that high a bar.
Nevertheless, we will take the extra step going forward to doublecheck the legitimacy of organizations that submit nominations before we accept them.
More troubling are lapses they pointed out to us in the judging of last year’s Asia-Pacific Stevies. They applied to be judges and were accepted, without providing the verification of their identities that we require. We’ve already taken steps to make sure that won’t happen again.
Questions about this? Contact michael@stevieawards.com.