Wholesale SCAM

Drama-Rama!  Wholesalers beware!  Last week / weekend I was (too deeply) involved in an attempted scam!  The whole situation was slightly traumatic but thankfully the dust has settled today.

Here’s the details:  Last week someone contacted me from “Ritchies Store” in Sydney Australia and requested a very large wholesale order. They said they had a specific shipper they wanted me to use, “Iship Inc,”  and gave me their email address to contact them with a shipping quote.  The shipping was $597 for 3 day express mail + customs.  It seemed high to pay on shipping for cards they were going to have to re-sale for a profit, but they said no, it’s OK it saves them the hassle.

So I invoiced the cost of their order plus the cost of shipping and took their payment via credit card.

THEN, when I contacted the “preferred shipping company” (Iship Inc) to set up a pick up time I was instructed to wire them money via money gram in order to schedule the pick up.  And that’s when the RED FLAGS went up.  What legit shipping company requires wired money?

There were a few other red flags I should have spotted before I got to that point (not great English, refusal to pay via paypal, a gmail account: Ritchiesstore@gmail.com) but the “wire money” part is what got me.  After some internet research I found this website:  419Scam  and more pecifically this information: http://www.419scam.org/419-phone-uk.htm#phone-uk

If an email mentions a UK phone number starting with +4470, it usually means that the sender of that mail is not in the UK at all and it is almost guaranteed to be a scam.

Usually the presence of a +44 70 number in a 419 scam email means you’re dealing with criminals based in Nigeria who are using these numbers to make people believe they’re dealing with someone legitimate who is in the UK instead of a criminal in an Internet cafe on a different continent.

• Do not reply to any emails that mention +4470 phone numbers!
• Never call such numbers!
• Break off all contact with these people!

….   The “Iship Inc” phone number was: +44704077213

So, over the weekend I found myself with their pending payment for $900 and instructions to wire money to someone via money gram.  I continued to communicate with “contact” at “Ritches Store” saying I would ship via UPS on Monday, that I didn’t trust wiring money, but they continued to insist I use “Iship.”

Finally I refunded the money I had charged.  And based on advice from friends, called the FBI to report it, and Visa to report the credit card being used.  Of course it was Saturday morning so no one was around for me to do anything.

Today is Monday and I called the FBI to report it.  They confirmed “Yes, it’s most definitely a scam” but there’s really nothing they can do about it.  They said I should call the bank again, which I did.  I gave the bank all the information I had and they said they’d do some research to look into it.

And for now, that’s about all I can do.

I consider myself a pretty street smart person who can usually spot a scam or fishy activity, but this was completely new to me.  Especially because I was getting paid and I wasn’t asked to send any money up front.  It was stressful while I was in the middle of it, but now that I’m out of it I have a little more perspective and feel good knowing I did the right thing.  (although it would have been nice to have made that really big sale..)

I wrote this blog because I want all you craft people, and small businesses who sell wholesale to know about this and beware!