Already reported to the police! Shenzhen freight forwarder was cheated and a large number of shipments were detained

In the first month of 2024, the freight forwarding circle dropped the first bomb of the new year.

Freight forwarders are in charge of the sellers’ goods. Any mistake will result in loss of both money and goods, so every move of the freight forwarder is closely watched. Recently, sellers have noticed a piece of news that the UPS account of a freight forwarder in Shenzhen was stolen, and a large number of freight forwarders and sellers were implicated.

The old freight forwarder fell, and a large number of cargo owners were implicated

On January 29, Shenzhen Lexun Global Logistics Supply Chain Co., Ltd. issued an announcement stating that the company’s UPS account had been stolen, resulting in more than 500 pieces of cargo being detained in Hong Kong.

Qichacha shows that Shenzhen LeXun Global Logistics Supply Chain Co., Ltd. was established in 2010. It is obviously not a newbie in the logistics industry. So how did this incident happen to an old freight forwarding company?

The announcement showed that the head of Lexun's business and Yang were colleagues at UPS many years ago. Taking advantage of this relationship, Yang lied that he wanted to cooperate with Lexun and used a fake US UPS account to trick Lexun into providing the shipper's account for binding. After learning Lexun's UPS account, Yang shipped a large amount of goods without Lexun's consent. Lexun only realized that it had been deceived after receiving inquiries from UPS sales.

Le Xun said it had reported the incident to the police and warned its peers and sellers to be wary of low-price channels. Why was there such a warning?

Because Lexun was cheated of this. According to reports from other industry media, because Lexun wanted to use the UPS low-price discount account fabricated by Yang , it not only lost two UPS accounts but also suffered huge financial losses.

First, Yang paid for the UPS freight. Yang shipped 1,170 items through Lexun's UPS account, of which 660 items cost about 455,000 yuan, which Lexun had paid to UPS.

The second is the company 's "overdue" UPS shipping fees. Since Yang claimed that he held a UPS low-price discount account, Le Xun transferred the payment to Yang, who paid through the account. However, Yang kept the money and did not pay UPS. Therefore, Le Xun had to pay UPS about 1.144 million yuan in shipping fees.

Moreover, after verification by LeXun, the so-called UPS low-price discount account held by Yang did not actually offer any discounts.

In addition to these losses, the warehouse rent and other fees incurred by the more than 500 pieces of goods detained by UPS are still to be paid, and this fee will continue to increase over time. So far, the total fees incurred are approximately 92,000 yuan.

In this incident, LeXun suffered huge financial losses, but the sellers were also hit hard. Now that the Spring Festival is approaching, companies are already doing the final finishing work and preparing to go home for the New Year. However, at this time, the goods were detained. It is not good to think about it, and the subsequent listing will be affected.

Fortunately, LeXun did not cover up the problem, but chose to deal with it actively and proposed a solution: first, it will coordinate a solution with the implicated peers as soon as possible; second, it will contact the owners of the detained goods as soon as possible to arrange follow-up matters, and it will coordinate the handling of the matter.

In the cross-border circle, we often hear that sellers fall into the pit of freight forwarders because they are greedy for low prices, but they never expected that one day freight forwarders could not escape the temptation of low prices. This incident once again illustrates a truth: Be cautious about cheap things. Expensive things are not necessarily good, but the risk of being too cheap is definitely higher.

Freight forwarding scams frequently occur, and many companies fall victim to them

In recent years, it is not uncommon for freight forwarders to be defrauded of monthly freight charges by their peers. For example, Xu Hongcheng and his gang, who were previously exposed by Yien.com, used this scam to defraud many freight forwarding companies. One of the freight forwarders revealed that the company was defrauded of up to 650,000 yuan, and the monthly charges for up to three months were not recovered.

In fact, various scams targeting freight forwarders have frequently appeared in recent years. Not only colleagues in the industry, but also scammers outside the industry are keeping a close eye on them, making it difficult to guard against them.

For example, a scam that was exposed last year was like this:

Some scammers will pretend to be a trading company and claim that they have a lot of containers of goods to move, and ask the freight forwarder to quote the price. After the freight forwarder quotes the price, he will quickly reply and accept the price. However, he will then use the excuse that "the Hong Kong company has no account in the mainland" to ask the freight forwarder to help pay the factory for the goods, and say that the money will be paid to the freight forwarder together with the freight.

Freight forwarders are not stupid, how could they be fooled by such a thing?

Because the scammers took advantage of the time difference between Hong Kong banks and mainland banks. It is reported that the scammers will first transfer the money to the freight forwarder, but the payment is in Hong Kong dollars or US dollars. When the freight forwarder sees the money in the Hong Kong account, he thinks that the money has been deposited into the account, but this is not the case. In banks in Hong Kong, "arrival" and "deposit" are different. The money that has "arrived" can be withdrawn by the other party within 24 hours.

The scammers took advantage of this time difference to commit fraud. Once the freight forwarder paid the factory, the scammers would immediately withdraw the money paid to the freight forwarder. Eventually, the money that the freight forwarder received disappeared inexplicably, while the money that they helped pay for the goods was defrauded.

There is also another type of fraud that is carried out through email. Previously, an Indian freight company had suffered a great loss in this regard, losing more than 3.7 million rupees.

It is reported that the freight forwarding company used the services of a foreign company at the time. A month later, the foreign company sent an email with detailed information about the bank account to which the money was transferred for the service. However, just a few days later, the freight forwarding company received another email. Both emails looked like they were sent by the same company, but the latter one instructed to transfer the money to another bank account. In the end, the freight forwarding company carelessly transferred the money to the second bank account. It was not until the foreign company asked for payment that it realized it had been deceived.

Most of the scams targeting freight forwarders that have been exposed now occur in China, but in fact, freight forwarders also fall into many traps abroad.

For example, the "Turkey scam". Turkish customs has a regulation that the freight forwarder needs to register the goods under the name of the consignee before the ship arrives at the Turkish port. If there is any change in the future, the written consent of the original consignee must be obtained.

This was exploited by some unscrupulous Turkish companies, who took advantage of this regulation and refused to pick up the goods for various reasons, waiting until the customs auction, and then bought them at a very low price as the legal first purchaser.

In addition, there are Indian scams, South African scams, Algerian scams, phishing scams, fake water bill scams, etc. I hope that freight forwarders can be more cautious in the process of shipping goods, which can not only avoid unnecessary losses, but also ensure that the seller's goods can be put on the shelves on time.