If you decide to work with Chinese providers, then, in addition to interesting experience and profit, you can deal with new fraud schemes that are not common in other countries. The most popular ones are told by Cedric Bo, a 10-year-old importer of goods from China, an expert in e-commerce, a Chinese historian, and a Chinese language teacher.

● Company President Fraud

The short description: accountants are tricked into sending money to the accounts of scammers.

Despite the primitiveness of this scheme, every year, small enterprises around the world lose millions in this way, and this happens not only in import-export but in any other area as well. Large enterprises are practically invulnerable to scammers, and they know about it – there are developed multi-stage mechanisms of “confirmation of payment,” one person can never make a large payment. For small and medium-sized businesses, the danger is obvious; moreover, the scheme “on behalf of the president” threatens even small companies involved in drop shipping, as well as any size online stores. Visit the romance scam page for more details about different scams.

To make this fraud possible, a fraudster needs to know a few simple things about you that are quickly found on the Internet:

– who is the president/director of the company;

– who is the accountant;

– email addresses of management and accounting.

A fraudster pretends to be the head of a company. There are a lot of services to help him, allowing to send anonymous letters, changing the address of the sender. When an accountant sees a letter from a manager coming from his email address, the address is correct, everything is as usual, and he doesn’t suspect anything.

“Make an urgent (confidential) transfer of such an amount to such an account of an enterprise in China as a 30% deposit for our order.” And the accountant makes the payment, without doubting anything, and the money goes irrevocably to the fraudster’s account.

How to get protected from it?

In a small enterprise, in order to protect itself from this kind of fraud, the accounting department should only prepare everything necessary for making a payment and entrust the confirmation of “last click” to the manager personally. Then the head will be able to view the lists of payments and block those that seem suspicious to him.

● Another variant of the same scam

The fraudster’s company is trying to impersonate “your Chinese supplier:” “Please pay attention, our bank details have changed. We ask you to make all subsequent payments to such an account.” And it works great too! You should always contact the supplier directly to reassure any changes related to such important issues as payment details and be informed on time. Otherwise, the next payment goes to scammers. When a real supplier, after some time, begins to demand its money, a fraud is revealed, but it is already impossible to fix anything.

How to get protected from it?

Call the supplier and ask for confirmation of whether they have really sent such a letter and the bank details have really changed

– Enter the rule that as soon as the change of bank details occurs, you carry out a double check: write an e-mail and call by phone to talk to a person whose voice you know.

– If you see that the supplier has suddenly changed phone numbers and bank details, this is also an alarming bell.

● Five Star Fraud

The short description: you are forced to write unfair feedback. Many novice businessmen are surprised that strange reviews are often found on AliExpress – a five-star rating and negative comments. This is exactly how those who were tried to be “bred” fight against dishonest suppliers.

You place an order on AliExpress, receive the goods and find out that they arrived with an unacceptable defect: some components are missing, there are tears and breakages, the ordered and paid 32-gig flashcard is 12 GB, a shirt with a hole in the back and the wrong size, etc. You complain, start a dispute, and demand a refund. And at that moment, the supplier starts … blackmailing you! His goal is to make sure that you do not ruin his reputation on the site and do not leave a bad comment.

“I will reimburse you for all expenses, but on the condition that you leave me a positive comment or a five-star comment.”
How to get protected from it?

If you are already blackmailed, do not risk your money and nerves; just give the supplier “five stars.” But leave comments telling that the supplier is unreliable, the goods are of poor quality, etc. Create a mismatch between the number of stars and the comment text so that