Kieran Wells sounds despondent on the phone. His mumbled words are frequently drowned out by the sound of children squealing in the background.
“I’m not a scammer,” Wells says. “The DJs are saying that I’ve charged them but I’ve not.”
For many DJs, promoters and venue owners in Scotland, the name Kieran Wells means trouble. Over the last ten years, he’s been accused of scamming dozens of young, hopeful DJs in Glasgow and beyond, by throwing fake events that never materialise.
At first glance, his method seems straightforward. Book vulnerable young DJs for their first event, ask them to pay for venue and soundsystem hire, get their friends and family to buy tickets, then shut down the event page and run off with the takings.
Today, I’m confronting Wells about the events he sets up every three to six months that never happen. I want to know why he books young DJs, then asks them to cover the costs, and why he seems hellbent on pissing off a music scene he clearly wants to be part of. His answer to most of my questions is the same: “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
I first heard about Wells in February 2026, when a techno DJ called ATØN published a TikTok sharing how she’d been booked for a gig that never happened. After she spoke out, her inbox was flooded with people from all over Scotland sharing their past run-ins with Wells.
My curiosity was instantly piqued. I love a niche, and exposing a man from a small town who repeatedly targets the hardstyle, bounce and techno scene sounded directly up my street.
It was supposed to be a classic exposé, but, as I peeled back the layers, things just weren’t adding up.
Is Wells a predatory fake promoter exploiting the hopes and dreams of young DJs for cash?
Or does he just want to be part of something?
This is the story of Glasgow’s most unsuccessful DJ deceiver.
‘You're Kieran Wells’
In September 2025, a Paisley-based 19-year-old hard techno DJ (who wants to remain anonymous) sent a DM to an account called TOXIC TECHNO EVENTS because they were looking for DJs to play an event. The man running the account got back to the DJ and put him on the line-up but he had a bit of an odd request: could the DJ also find him other people to play the night?
The young DJ agreed at first but alarm bells started faintly ringing when he was also asked to hunt for a venue. He did so anyway.
Eventually they secured a venue called Harleys Sky Bar in Rutherglen. “I thought everything was going very smoothly, until I got a private message saying ‘look mate, I've not got any money for the venue hire. Can you pay for it?’ And I said, well, I'm not getting paid until next week, but if you need me to cover it, I can cover it.”
The next day, another message from TOXIC TECHNO: “Can you pay for rig [soundsystem] hire as well? I'll give you a percentage of the ticket sales.”
After that, the artist decided not to send any money, but the date was set nonetheless: 28th November 2025. The tickets went live on Skiddle and sold about 30 before, out of the blue, everything disappeared.
“Overnight the event was cancelled, and the cause was a ‘family emergency’,” the artist tells me. “We were all confused and raging. We tried texting him, he didn't respond. I sent about 15 messages.”
Many of the DJs on the line-up were making their debut performance, so their friends and family had bought tickets.
A week later, TOXIC TECHNO wrote in the group chat: “I'm sorry guys, can we still go ahead with this event?”
“And we all just went, it's not happening mate because we've just found out something about you. You’re Kieran Wells.”
This DJ’s story is not unique. From screenshots I’ve seen, Wells has been described as a “troublemaking prick”, a “tool”, a “fucking chocolate”, a “scumbag”, an “absolute joker”, “a blagger”, “a fuckin [sic] roaster”, a “clown”, a “whoppa”, a “sneaky snake”, a “bag a bawz”, a “fucking melt” and a “complete jakeball”.
A significant percentage of the Scottish techno scene knows Wells’ tricks, which might be why he approaches new artists with his figmental event schemes.
TWNTRZ (pronounced tee-winters) is 18 years-old, based in Fife and was on the hunt for his first gig when he saw the post from TECHNO PRODUCTIONS scouting for DJs in January 2026. TWNTRZ sent a message, was accepted onto the line-up and added to an Instagram group chat with other early-career DJs. Then he got a message asking if he could design the flyer.
TWNTRZ didn’t have much money but asked a friend to design it and paid to get them printed. “It cost me a few bucks but I wanted to promote the event,” TWNTRZ says with a slight stammer.
He was just about to send the posters to the address he was given in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, when he noticed several more DJs had been added to the group chat and his poster was no longer up-to-date.
Then another private message from TECHNO PRODUCTIONS:
Hi mate I know this is a big ask have you got a £100 to spare to put down for a venue in paisley
TWNTRZ didn’t have the money, but if he did, he says he would have sent it.
ATØN, AKA Amy Hutton, has a similar story. She’s used to getting DJ bookings through her DMs, so when a message from TECHNO PRODUCTIONS landed in her inbox on February 10th 2026, she didn’t think much of it.
“Hi are you free for a hard techno set
4th July
6th avenue nightclub Stewarton”
“The message was quite unprofessional,” Hutton tells me. “Usually, a promoter would be much more detailed, and most gigs are booked about two months before.”
She also noticed the events page — events_1357 — was five years old and the name had been changed multiple times. But Hutton accepted the gig anyway, and was immediately added to an Instagram group chat with around 12 other DJs.
As more names were added to the chat, Hutton had questions. “There were two rooms, and the club was only open from 10:30pm to 3am,” she says. “I did the maths and it was going to be 20-minute sets back-to-back. I started asking people where they were traveling from. People were coming from all over Scotland – Dundee, Edinburgh – for this 20 minute gig in this little club that no one's ever heard of.”
Hutton says it soon became clear the promoter only cared about selling tickets, so she suggested he make a video on Instagram to promote the night.
“Within five minutes, he put a video of him speaking to the camera,” she says. Almost instantly, a DJ under Hutton’s management sent her frantic private messages.
“He said this guy puts these nights on, sells all the tickets, gets all the money, and then days before the event cancels it, shuts down all the Instagram accounts and disappears off the radar, taking all the money and leaving all DJs with no gig,” Hutton says. It was Wells. Hutton outed him in the group chat, and within a day or two he wrote: “TO EVERYONE.. I’M SORRY”, removed everyone from the chat, deleted the event page and left the DJs with no gig.
The let down
If Wells is a scammer, he isn’t a very good one. I spoke to around 10 DJs, promoters, venues and managers for this article and not one of them gave him any money. The ticketing sites he used automatically refunded tickets as soon as the event was cancelled, so he didn’t get any cash there.
I spoke to the owners of Harleys Sky Bar and they told me Wells really did try to book their venue, but they stopped responding to him after a stream of pointless messages made it clear he was a time-waster.
One manager said four of his artists had run-ins with Wells. One was caught up in several of his fake events over the course of three years. He didn’t respond to my request for an interview.
What Wells does successfully take from people is hope and time. He books young DJs who are so excited for their first gig they’ll do anything to make it happen, including hunting for venues, designing posters and recruiting other DJs. When the events disappear, they’re left humiliated and deflated, forced to tell friends and family the event they’d all booked tickets for will no longer happen.
TWNTRZ discovered DJing during a particularly rough period in life. His best friend had just passed away and he didn’t feel up to moving to the States as planned to play professional football. But learning to DJ took his mind off things. When his first gig didn’t happen, he was crushed. “It was a let down because I was chasing my dream,” he tells me. “It got my hopes up. I don’t know what he gets out of it.”
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That’s the big question. And to get the answer, I had to go back to the beginning.
’Shite’: the playlist
It’s a chilly spring morning in Wells’ hometown of Bonnybridge, and the taxi drops me off next to a sculpture of a grenade dedicated to the fallen soldiers of WWII. Overhead, a Saltire and Union Jack flap in the wind. A car alarm goes off in the distance.
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