Even on the off chance it was legit why would one wish to do business with someone who acted so amateurish? It is perfectly fine to, say, send out an email to everyone working in Superconductor research to attend next month's conference in Place, Country and sugar it with offers to give presentations, it is another matter to invite someone by name to present in another country without at least a very proper and personalized invite and not to expect much without offers of proper coverage of travel expenses. As to pay to publish, I've no specific issue with it as a concept anymore then pay to read but if one wants to go the non-peer review route there's already plenty of high-view sites like Science 2.0 where they don't charge just warn they'll axe any post that sounds like it was written by a drooling maniac.