Import Export Shipping Fraud

There are a number of scams ongoing in the shipping industry where buyers are being tricked into buying vehicles (motorcycles, cars or machinery) from overseas suppliers and being asked to make a good will 10% deposit toward the total cost of the transaction. The deposit is requested to be paid from the buyer to a shipping company. The payment actually goes into a Wire Transfer account and not the shipping company at all. Such Wire Transfer accounts are collect at source, have no paper trail and the often used in online fraud.

EON Logistics Ltd do not handle shipping fees or deposits unless directly booked by with us.

The online criminal uses various online advertising websites which match up private buyers and sellers of vehicles or plant equipment. The buyer usually receives fake documents through email and the documents are faked to look like a legitimate shipping company. The fake documents often have a real telephone contact number that is never answered, as it is not the shipping company. The banking details may look legitimate but the bank transfer account is Wire Transfer.

The fraudster usually buys a cheap domain name to look very similar to the shipping company in order to make the emails seem legitimate. Sometimes, they may use free email accounts such as hotmail or google. Buyers should check that the email address is actually identical to the shipping company domain name and not variants. i.e. info@shipgoods.com and not info@ship-goods.com or info@shpgoods.com CHECK for hyphenation or misspellings of domain names.

The online criminal may also send fake data that makes a personal connection with the buyer such as family pictures, job or holidays snaps.

Do you reconise this type of scam? Have you bought vehicles through websites?

• Always contact the shipping company direct by phone and speak to them.
• Check document email addresses match to the company website domain spelling
• Arrange shipping yourself (often at more favourable rates)
• Genuine sellers never accept deposits, only full purchase payments
• Genuine sellers will not dictate the shipping agent
• Shipping agents never take deposits unless arranged directly and not third parties
• Check other details such as Inspection Agent or Seller details on documents

Example fake document.