Important things to look for in international business transactions:
Email address the request is form:
While many people have Gmail (user@gmail.com) or Yahoo accounts (user@yahoo.com), most use their business emails with their company web domains (user@yourcompany.com) to conduct large business. The sign the customer has a real webdomain is a good sign, as this usually requires some kind of investment. The use of a free email provider is simply something to look for, as many people have all their emails forwarded to their Gmail account for productivity. If something is mailed from user@yourcompany.com on behalf of user@gmail.com, that is probably the case (Outlook has an issue with Gmail) and is not necessarily cause to worry. In the case of the Feed the Children scam, however, the original banner printing scammer was John Kennedy (depella0124@gmail.com) and the fake shipper was Evans Williams (mcdanielshipping@yahoo.com). These combined should raise suspicion. Keep in mind, however, a lot of legitimate businesses do have companyname@gmail.com.
No websites offered / the person's names not on them:
As previously mentioned, an email of yourcompany@gmail.com is fairly common, especially among small businesses; so don’t let this throw you off. However, if there is no company website at all this would be a red flag to me. Perform a quick search in Google to determine if the company has a website, or try companyname.com. Today domains cost under $6 to register, and monthly hosting is as cheap as $3 per month, there is no reason not to have some type of website for your business. If the company does have a website, check the ranking of it on Alexa (www.alexa.com) and Google’s PageRank (download the Google Toolbar) to make sure the site is actually in use and not just set up temporarily as part of the scam (some current scams are very elaborate). For Alexa, the lower the number is the better. For PageRank, the higher the number the better (always between 0-10). Low traffic sites and PageRank aren’t necessarily a red flag, but should warrant a more thorough investigation if this is the case. If there is no information for one or both of these, that is not a good sign. If there is an email address listed on the company website, feel free to contact them and verify that the individual you are working with is in fact a legitimate employee.
Misspellings in CRITICAL elements of an email:
While perfect English, grammar, and spelling should not be expected from foreign contacts, there are some simple things that in a serious request they would take the time to double check. In our example, this includes what is actually going to be printed on the banner and the message subject. For example, one email had a subject of “Bannera Request” and they wanted to have the banners printed with “Feed the Chidren” on them.
They only will pay with credit card and can’t provide any supporting documentation:
While paying with a credit card might also seem like a legitimate request, it really isn’t with new customers overseas. Once your product leaves, you have very little power if the customer claims to never receive the goods or simply decides they don't want or like them. When dealing overseas with first time customers, you should require a bank wire transfer. If you are accepting credit cards, make the buyer send you a scan of the following:
- the front and back of the card
- their Government issued ID
- their last Credit Card billing statement
Seller can’t choose shipper & Seller must pay shipper:
The shipping policy I prefer in dealing with international transactions is that both the buyer and the seller request quotes from their preferred shipping agents and exchange this information. This helps you get the most competitive rate and shows a little good faith in the transaction. While the buyer should has the right to choose what company to go with, if they choose their preferred shipper they should pay them directly. Obviously you must make sure they pay you for the products before they are shipped out or picked up. You also should help coordinate the shipping arrangements, but you should not be required to pay for a buyer arranged shipping agreement with a buyer arranged shipping company. In the original banner scam, they try and mislead you into thinking you are making the shipping arrangements by having you request the quote from their preferred shipper (read, Fake Shipper). However, by not letting you chose the company you are requesting the quote from they are ultimately the ones in full control. The scammers in this case suspiciously don’t ask for any other quotes or ask if you currently work with a local shipper. Requesting you to forward money via Western Union to anyone is generally fraud.
Refusal to compromise:
International scammers (particularly the ones from Africa) will usually refuse to compromise on any aspect of the deal. In our original example, if you contact the original scammer and ask to use another shipping company, even telling them it is half the cost, the African scam artist will insist they use their fake shipping company or cancel their order entirely. This does not make any business sense. They cited that no other shipping company in the world knew how to find them. What is a better policy in dealing with international transactions is that both the buyer and the seller request quotes from their preferred shipping agents and agree on one to use. There are very few monopolies in the shipping industry, and the reasoning they one can avoid import / export tax or that only one company can find there location is a clear red flag.
Billing Address & Shipping Address:
A quick search on Google revealed that the billing address the first banner scammer gave for the credit card payment was actually a used car dealership in central Illinois. Ironically, it wasn’t more than an hour or so away from where I’m located, yet the person requesting the banners was in the UK. Both should alert you that something weird is going on. I called the car dealership to see if they knew anything about this; they were elated I called and assured me they did not order the banners. If you are given a phone number for the billing address, feel free to call that as well. A quick Google search of the address they give you should yeild some local businesses at or near that address-- feel free to call them to verify as well.
Refusal to use your website or shopping cart software:
One thing I noted about scam artists were the scam perpetrators would avoid using my company’s website any more than absolutely necessary. This is probably in an effort not to have their IP address and other information recorded on our server logs, which would most likely be investigated once we discovered the fraud later on. The scammers' emailed my info@domain.com email address instead of using our website’s “Contact Us” form and emailed us their credit card information instead of inputting it into our secure web store as I advised. After being contacted, I checked my traffic history with Google Analytics and I had received one visitor on that day from Ghana (who claimed to be in the UK). Ultimately, I confirmed their location by forcing them to an “invoice” page to print their receipt that grabbed their IP address after I refused to email them one. More sophisticated scam artists and con men will route to your website using a local server and IP address or an onion router (such as TOR), masking their true location. However, to save time on my end and prevent lower level scams, I have blocked IP domains from high risk countries around the world (article coming soon) using .htaccess commands.
In Conclusion:
These are just some of the things to look out for when dealing with quote or proposal requests from foriegn countries. Use your best judgement and realize that for every 4 or 5 fake requests (scam attempts) I recieve one legitamate overseas business deal (usually they can be lucrative). I have however only had a handful of printing requests from overseas actually pan out, as the cost of shipping often times prohibits your cost from being competitive. However, with the current low exhange rate and the weak US dollar, overseas companies and individuals are finding all kinds of American products and services suddenly extremely more affordable.
Best of luck.
