Another way for the scammers is to defraud the goods. This is more common in West African countries. The usual practice is to use D/P settlement or prepay a small deposit. After the exporter delivers the goods to Africa, they may collude with the freight forwarder to release the goods without a bill of lading (pick up the goods based on the freight forwarder’s instructions without the original freight forwarder’s bill of lading); or unreasonably refuse to pay, taking advantage of the exporter’s unwillingness to return the goods (due to the high round-trip freight and inconvenient procedures), so that the goods are stranded at the dock and auctioned by the customs, and then purchased at a low price. The typical characteristics of this type of scammers are: first, they come from Nigeria and Benin, traditional gathering places for international scammers, and they will obviously feel unfamiliar with the products during the negotiation; third, they are quick to trade, generally not too harsh on the price, and give a lot of profit to promote early transactions; fourth, they mostly insist on D/P settlement.
Some scammers will “lay the line to catch big fish”, start with small transactions, “pay on time and have reliable credit”, and wait for the seller to relax their vigilance before making a large-scale transaction. The time of delivery and payment is often chosen on weekends and holidays, and the seller is lured to deliver the goods first by taking advantage of international time differences and holidays, and then running away.
Even worse, some people pretend to pay and deliberately fill in the wrong bank information. When the funds are on the way, they urge the seller to ship the goods. If the seller does not understand the difference between “arrived” and “on the way” of bank remittances, and is careless, it is easy to be deceived. After the goods are shipped, the money is remitted to the domestic account, but it cannot be credited due to incorrect information. It is returned and the seller loses both money and goods.
It is easy to deal with these pure scammers. They do not believe in easy “fortune” and do not participate in illegal activities. For customers who are trading for the first time, they insist on letter of credit settlement or a considerable proportion of advance payment, and adopt CNF/CIF, which is a method that facilitates the control of property rights. Commercial credit should be emphasized, but vigilance should not be let down. Even for customers who have cooperated before, they should insist on handling according to the contract. For customers’ unreasonable demands, they can be delayed and shirked without hurting the relationship. For payment and delivery types, special attention should be paid to holidays, etc., which can basically be eliminated.