Real offer or scam? The signals that separate a genuine deal from a fraud
This market carries more fraud than almost any other in physical trade. You cannot avoid every bad actor, but nearly every scam shares the same handful of tells.
By Hugo Amanajás
This market carries more fraud than almost any other corner of physical trade, and the reason is not mysterious. The products are valuable, many buyers are new to the mechanics, and the whole thing happens across borders where verification is slow and expensive. You cannot avoid every bad actor. You can learn to read the pattern, because nearly every scam runs on the same small set of tells.
The tells
- 0101
Money before contract
Any request that the buyer pay a fee, a performance deposit, a tank storage charge or a commission before there is a signed contract and operative instruments. A real transaction never asks the buyer to pay out first.
- 0202
The offer that skips the sequence
A seller pressing to send a Bill of Lading, a fresh inspection report or proof of product before an NCNDA, before a contract. The document that proves a real cargo is the one taken on your cargo at loading, not one emailed to win the deal.
- 0303
The soft probe on the bank
Asking the buyer's bank to issue a soft probe, a BCL, an RWA message or a pre-advice as the first step, or asking to see the buyer's funds before anything is signed. This is how the other side tests whether it can extract a commitment while giving none.
- 0404
Price too good, volume too big
A price well below the market attached to enormous monthly tonnage, from a source that will not be named. If it were real, it would not be circulating to a cold contact through an unverified chain.
- 0505
The hidden chain
No one will say who the buyer or the seller actually is. Undisclosed principals and five-layer broker chains are the environment fraud needs to survive. Disclosure is the thing it cannot tolerate.
- 0606
Pressure and urgency
The allocation closes today. Another buyer is ready to sign. Real cargo does not evaporate in an afternoon, and a genuine seller does not need to rush you past the checks.
The structure that makes fraud fail
Look again at the tells and you will notice that every protection in a real deal is aimed squarely at one of them. The sequence, LOI then NCNDA then contract then instruments, means no side is exposed before the other has committed. Payment under UCP 600 means money does not leave the buyer's bank without conforming documents. Inspection at loading means the product is proven on your cargo, not on a recycled report. Disclosed principals mean there is no hidden chain for a fraud to live in. None of these rules exists to slow you down. Each one exists because someone learned it the hard way and wrote it down so the next buyer would not have to.
/ The fastest test in this market
A genuine counterparty is not offended by the process. It welcomes the process, because the process protects the honest party as much as it exposes the dishonest one. So propose the correct sequence: signed protections, payment under UCP 600, inspection at loading. Then watch. A real deal moves forward. A scam finds a reason it cannot.
The full documentary procedure referenced here is published on our Procedures page.
View Procedures/ About the author
Hugo Amanajás
Hugo Amanajás is an engineer and commodities broker, and the founder of Juros e Bolsa, a CVM-authorised investment advisory in Brazil. He works on the origination and structuring of Brazilian commodities and writes Duna Trading's Insights on how the physical trade actually works, from documentary procedure to compliance.
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