The specifics of the transportation companies’ work provide scammers with a wide scope for deploying their activities. TELS GLOBAL is also occasionally targeted by cargo thieves, and a strong screening and clearance system is designed to combat them.
Case study
On the Easter eve and before the long weekend, the SRM Department (handling transportation companies) received a task to approve a new transportation company for cooperation. The cargo was illiquid – chemical products, transportation route – Poland-Germany, the value was 50,000 Euro.
The Carrier's card was filled out in accordance with the requirements, the mandatory documents were attached and relevant, the necessary information was also found in the official public sources to assess the reliability of the counterparty. The potential Carrier even had an account on the Trans.eu freight exchange with several positive reviews. It seemed quite normal, however:
- The company was registered recently.
- The company was registered at the virtual address.
- The freight exchange listed the contact information of a single employee who was both the owner and the manager.
To run an additional check, we asked the carrier for an additional action:
- We requested a document confirming that the carrier was indeed registered and located at the specified address.
- We asked for additional recommendations.
- We suggested connecting the vehicle that would make the first haul to the Project44 tracking system.
These revisions were not performed, as a result of which a decision was made to refuse this carrier to perform transportation, despite our manager’s persistent requests to authorize cooperation (the offered rate was very attractive and the carrier appeared to be trustworthy).
A few weeks later, the name of this company was featured online in the top “Freight Fraud” news stories. Three companies at once fell for the tricks of this “carrier”, with more than 238,000 Euro worth of cargo stolen, the scammer’s phone number was switched off and the virtual office was closed.
Conclusions
In most cases, the bottleneck in checking a contractor is insufficient meticulousness and haste on the part of employees in implementing the regulations on the admission of contractors to cooperation.
It’s important to remember that any holidays and long weekends are the best time for scammers. Within the time allowed, they manage not only to escape with the cargo, but also to sell it.
A request to register a vehicle in a real-time cargo tracking system is perceived normally by conscientious carriers and negatively by scammers. Even though the mere fact of refusal is not yet an indication of criminal intent, and consent does not guarantee protection against cargo theft, in combination with other control measures it creates a barrier to the implementation of fraudulent plans.