International trade itself is a dangerous world. Most salesmen will encounter fraud cases to some extent, so they must be on guard. In foreign trade, exporters have difficulty communicating in language, are unfamiliar with international practices, have different laws and customs in different countries, are far away from each other, have time differences due to day and night reversals, and have high costs and difficulties in collecting cross-border lawsuits. These factors provide convenient conditions for all kinds of international fraud.
International trade fraud can be roughly divided into two categories: one is the pure liar type, who designs a scam from the beginning to lure people in; the other is the unscrupulous businessman type, that is, they do business as usual, but use various means to set up obstacles in the transaction process, and use methods such as price cuts and claims to force exporters to sell products at a low price.
The most common fraud case is the “pie in the sky” type. For example, the “419 fraud letter” that foreign trade companies often receive, the basic format of the scam is: claiming that due to various reasons, which are often in line with the times and closely linked to international news dynamics, they seem realistic, such as African coups, Iraqi senior officials fleeing, or bank liquidations, etc., they have obtained a large sum of money – usually tens of millions of US dollars, but cannot be directly withdrawn due to local bank, government control or turbulent situation. They have to resort to secret contact and ask you to provide an account for transfer, transfer this huge amount of money to your account and then transfer it out. As a reward, you will be given a certain percentage of the amount. This scam looks very simple: you don’t have to do anything, just provide an account, and then wait to receive the money. In fact, if you are really fooled and participate, there will be roughly four developments. First, “it is a major matter and requires an interview”, luring you to a third country and taking the opportunity to kidnap and blackmail; second, claiming that a certain fee is required in the process of handling the transfer, defrauding money; third, claiming that detailed bank information is required, slowly obtaining account information, and finally stealing the amount in the account; fourth, using your legal and formal trade bank account as a temporary channel for international money laundering. Although the scam is simple, ordinary people have a common problem. When they first get involved in a scam, they are cautious and suspicious. When they are really fooled, they will devote themselves to it, constantly convincing themselves to believe even those obvious absurdities. When they wake up and find that they have been deceived, they are too ashamed to speak out. This is also the reason why many simple old scams can be “thriving” for decades. The above scams first appeared on a large scale in Nigeria. The local government set up a “419 investigation” and later referred to similar methods as “419 fraud.” When it was rampant, foreign trade companies received similar letters almost every day. There are also similar ones claiming to be from organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa, luring people in under the guise of government procurement, and then defrauding small amounts of money under the names of “bidding fees”, “registration fees”, and “document fees”.