It is often said that “if you walk along the bank, there are no shoes that are not wet.” After staying in the foreign trade circle for a long time, we may be able to earn a lot of money or accumulate a lot of important experience in doing foreign trade, but most importantly, we certainly have encountered some foreign trade scams. These foreign trade scams come in many forms, but there is always one common feature, which is to let you be caught off guard. Once you are cheated, you will rarely catch the scammers effectively. You will only have to take a “hard loss” and learn from your mistakes. You will be more cautious in the future foreign trade business to avoid repeating the same mistakes. However, there are too many forms of foreign trade scams. Some forms of foreign trade scams can really be falsified. Even some veteran foreign trade circles can fall into the trap of fraudsters, not to mention foreign trade novices.
Therefore, I hereby summarize some common foreign trade scams and corresponding prevention strategies, hoping to play a positive role in warning and helping people in their future trade practices.
The first kind of scam is the “phishing website”. Most of the time, this kind of phishing website is really fake and hard to identify effectively. In general, these foreign trade fraudsters will pretend to be one of your customers and send you an email. This e-mail is almost impeccable in terms of content and professional terminology, which makes you think that this e-mail is really from your old customers. Of course, after cheating your trust through content, the most important thing is that they will attach a website link to the e-mail and will induce you to click on this link through various rhetoric. Sometimes, if you open this link a little bit, you will only be prompted to enter your account password and then steal money. Otherwise, the entire company’s system will be “hacked” and a large amount of confidential information inside the company will be leaked. In short, no matter what kind, if you click on the connection of this phishing website, you will always suffer certain losses.
The second kind of fraud is the contract fraud. This kind of fraud is also a kind of trap that foreign trade fraudsters have tried many times. Although the signing of foreign trade contracts has certain legal effects, there are always many loopholes in the relevant laws and regulations on international trade, and these loopholes have also become an excuse for fraudsters to exploit. In the process of foreign trade cooperation, when the key contracts are signed, these foreign trade swindlers use various excuses to evade them, one is to not sign the contracts, the other is to find ways to change the payment methods and confuse the public. Moreover, when they do these bad acts, they will find out all kinds of grandiose excuses for fear of arousing your doubts, such as how the so-and-so regulations say, and when you listen to them, they think it seems very reasonable. Then, after seeing that you have loosened up, the swindler will repeatedly guarantee how it will drip, and then lure you into the trap step by step, eventually the money and goods will be empty.
The third kind of fraud is the fraud on the letter of credit. This kind of fraud is also the most hateful kind of fraud. I believe many foreign trade experts have encountered this form of fraud. At the beginning, foreign trade swindlers will pretend to cooperate with you, and then all the processes will follow the normal cooperation process, but they have drawn up some “soft terms” in the credit payment terms. Generally speaking, these soft terms in the letter of credit are just for you not to find them, so it is difficult to find them effectively if you don’t look carefully. The reason why the swindler did this is that he wants you to violate the terms of the letter of credit unconsciously. In this way, the letter of credit is equivalent to an invalid “waste paper”. Without the guarantee of the letter of credit, it is even more difficult for me to obtain the payment for the goods. At this time, if you want to discuss with the swindler’s customers, it is also tantamount to “seeking skin from the tiger”. No matter how you persuade, you will not be able to escape the big mouth of the other lion. In some cases, the requirements put forward by the customers are really excessive. If you follow their requirements, the business will lose all money. If you don’t follow the requirements, you will lose a batch of goods in vain. Therefore, no matter what kind of situation it is, it makes people “dumb eat Coptis chinensis and have difficulty saying anything”.
Although foreign trade is full of all kinds of scams, if we classify these scams, we will find that they are nothing more than these three kinds. First, they test your professionalism, which is not strong and easy to be cheated. Second, test your tolerance bottom line. If you give up on principle, you will easily be cheated. Third, test your carefulness. If you are careless, you are more likely to be cheated. Therefore, when we receive the relevant foreign trade cooperation request letter, we should not be too eager for success or too hot-headed, calm down, think rationally, carefully distinguish, carefully consider each foreign trade order with your “professional bottom line care”, strive to do a good job in risk prevention, try to see through scams and save ourselves.
Original Artical，Author：China Trade Agent，if repost，please give references ：https://offers-bg.com/alert-foreign-trade-fraud-exposed/
