They will contact you via Linkedin, Skype or any other social media available where your contact information is available. The contact begins as follow, a seller's representative reaches out to you as an example, seller for sugar, letting you know prices, sample contracts and procedures of seller. Then a day later, a buyer contacts you regarding a request for sugar. You establish a communication between seller and buyer. Then the seller responds very professional to your questions and things are running smooth (so you will think), then when the buyer receives a draft contract, the buyer signs and sends it to you. At this point you may be thinking, wow, I'm about to close on this big sugar deal with a big commission. Then the buyer advices you they need the contract by Wednesday of that week due to some traveling of the seller in which he needs to open up the letter of credit before departing. Then you advice the seller that buyer needs contract no later than Wednesday. The seller advices you that the contract cannot be done until Friday, but he is going to call the seller's office that operates in Italy and Brussels. Once he contacts the seller's office he manages to speak with the secretary in which he has negotiated a deal with her. The deal is, if she receives 300 Euros by the end of the day, she will push the contract and she will send it before Wednesday. The seller's representative will then ask you to split the fee of the 300 Euros, 150/150 Euros each. This is where they try to scam you, they want you to think that you are about close this big deal, with lots of commissions and 150 Euros is nothing and he's being helpful by paying half of the cost with you. The companies that are being use are the following; Lampinton, Ms. Giovanna Pointner (Bank's representative), Credit Agricole is one of the banks mentioned on the ICPO, Mr. Cedric Harmeling as buyer, Elisa Klein from Germany as the buyer's representative, Leon Bouquist claims he has 8 years in the sugar business.
We hope this message gets distribute to all our commodities members in Linkedin and everywhere we meet in order to stop these guys from scamming others that may not be aware of them. Please leave your comments below. Also forward this blog to all your friends involve with commodities and advice them of these scams going around.
