In my previous post, I listed several online ways to try to figure if someone with whom we are about to deal is a scammer or not. In this post, I will list some offline ways to try to catch a scammer. These are simple and low-cost ideas and some are free ways to try to figure out the scammer. So, I truly advise you to follow the steps because this will increase your own security.

1. Ask for registration number.
Each registered company has a registration number allocated to them by their local authority. If the company you are about to deal with is registered, so, a legal entity, they will give it to you. Afterwards, nothing is more easy that to go on their respective ministry of commerce website and verify the information. To find the ministry of commerce of Mauritius for example, just go on Google.com and type “ministry of commerce Mauritius” and you will surely get it. To verify the information, a mail to the department of commerce is often sufficient.

2. Send a letter to the physical address (my preferred one).
Actually no scammer will give his real physical address unless he is able to relocate himself quickly elsewhere but it is not something they will do or they will have to move each time. Send them a letter without telling them about the letter but include this line or something like this in the letter: “This letter is for security purposes. To validate the transaction, please send us a mail with the following code in the mail: validate120received00”. This proves that the physical address exists and in case of scamming that they can be traced and prosecuted.

3. Ask for a face to face meeting
A very good thing is to ask for a face to face meeting before sending money or sending the product. There is no scammer who will accept a face to face meeting if he is intelligent. So, if someone answer no to your request, just ask him why and if he answers that he don’t have time or such silly thing, you can figure out that he is a scammer. A true businessman might tell you that they he doesn’t have time but proposes an alternative like videoconference or whatever else.

4. Ask for identity proof
Does the scammer claim that he is the director of the company and his name is such and such. Ask him to send you a copy of the identity card by mail or just scan and email it to you. Remember that you are about to send money to someone you don’t know and very often, the amount of money you are about to send is huge, so, don’t hesitate to ask for the identity card and just compare to the information on the trade lead. On the website he claims that his name is Mr. XY and on the identity card, his name is Mr. AB: so, what do you conclude.

Replying to [bsanssouci]: You tried, I'll give you that.

1. The registration number: By itself it proves nothing. I can't tell you the number of people I have replied to because the scammer gave the business registration number to a real company only to be scammed anyways.

2. Sending a letter to an address: Mail gets lost all over the world. Are you advising members to send mail via courier? That can get expensive.

3. Asking for a face to face meeting: Time is a resource that a supplier or buyer cant get back. Any supplier is going to weigh the time spent based on the amount of the purchase to be discussed. The other thing a true supplier will want to see is the finacial capability of the perspective buyer before wasting their time. So this is not a true indicator of a real business.

4. Proof of Identity: This to can be faked very easily. The same goes for using passports as a means of identity. Even references can be faked.

5. Free e-mail: This has nothing to do with the legitimacy of a business by itself. Many successful businessmen use free sites. Instead of having to deal with the quagmire of incoming enquiries, most free sites are favorable as you can add filters to weed out the junk and the spam somthing not avialble but to the most high end web hosting sites.

6. White Pages + Yellow Pages: These too can be used as a point of reference but alone mean nothing. Not every country has them. For instance Singapore. Yes some businesses list with the on-line yellow pages there, but that is not confirmation they are a business. Actually in Singapore the Green Book is a better reference. It depends on the Country.

7. Ministry of Commerce: Not all countries have open access to the registrar of companies and in many cases unless you can read the language of that country it does you no good unless you want to spend money on the translation.

8. Ficticious profiles: Many countries have business entities that are not companies. They may be businesses that are family or singly owned such as D.B.A. There will be no record on a national or even state or province level. But it does not make them a fake business.

I do not know how long you have been verifying businesses, but I believe you may have lost out on alot of business in both buying and selling if you have stuck to your 16 different rules that I have seen you post. They may work for you and then again in some instances they may work for a few others. I got my start over 25 years ago as a purchasing agent for a large corporation before I went out on my own 23 years ago. How do you think we verified companies without the internet and computers?

Ranger

Replying to [Ranger]:
would you be able to tell me how risky this company would be to trade with? INDO TECH GHD GALERY. CO. LTD
they have given me these details for W/U transfer but also give me the details and option for bank transfer.

For Western Union please see the details below :
Receiver first name : Stam
Receiver last name : Covic
Receiver address : Jln.Tanjung sari no.135
Receiver province : North Sumatera
Receiver zip code : 20112
Receiver State : Indonesia
I Have just lost over $4000 to a supplier ( greatest-trade ) earlier in the year, and have kind of become paranoid of my money being stolen again.