It's a very sleazy way of getting meetup members. I bet her other "groups" were also formed this way. Sounds like Meredith Monroe is selling some kind of scammy product to startup companies.

In a way, it's also brilliant -- hack your way into acquiring targeted audiences without the audience knowing they signed up for something slightly different. But yeah, I would probably put Meredith Monroe into the same bucket of people who acquired my email from various sources and is now trying to sell me viagra pills.

The link was to a public post on that group that described the situation. That post was removed as was the complete discussion and mailing list

Yes, the group name was changed from "Hacker News Cologne Meetup" by the new unsolicited "organizer".