Most losses reported by importers do not come from a company that was obviously fake. They come from a real, findable company where one detail did not match the story: the account holder, the scope, the address, or the speed. The signals below are grouped by what they should make you do.
These are the ones to treat as hard stops. They do not mean fraud is certain, but each one removes the protection you thought you had.
These do not point at identity at all. They point at a deal that is priced for a different reality than the one you were shown.
Each of these is answerable from public records in a few minutes, which is exactly why it is worth answering before you escalate.
| Signal | What it looks like | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Payment to a personal account | The invoice is in the company name but the bank details are an individual's name, or a different company's name | Stop. Ask for bank details in the registered legal name of the entity you verified, and compare them to what the registry shows |
| A newly formed company with a large first order | Registration date is weeks or months old, and the first order is already substantial | Ask who the manufacturing entity is and who has produced the goods before. A trading entity is normal, an unnamed one is not |
| Scope that does not cover your goods | The registered business scope lists unrelated wholesale categories | Ask for the entity that is registered for your product, and the invoice trail between the two |
| Price well below the market you know | Quotes noticeably under every other quote, with a deadline attached | Treat the gap as the size of the risk, not as your margin. Ask what is different about the material, the grade or the packaging |
| Urgency from the seller's side | Discount valid today only, production slot about to go to somebody else, payment required before documents | Slowness is your control. Any discount that expires faster than you can verify a company is priced to beat your checks |
| Refusal of a third-party inspection | Inspection is possible only after full payment, or only at a site you are not told in advance | Inspect before balance payment, at a named address, by an inspector you chose |
| One address, many companies | The registered address returns a long list of unrelated businesses | Shared and serviced offices are legal and common. It means the address proves nothing, so lean on the code, the scope and the account name instead |
| Name changes in the conversation | The website, the quotation, the invoice and the account use different name variants | Collect the unified social credit code of each and compare. Different codes, different legal persons |
| Documents that only exist as images | Registration certificates as photographs, never a registry lookup you can repeat | Repeat the lookup yourself on the official registry. If it cannot be repeated, it is not evidence |
A single flag is a question. Three flags on the same order is a decision you should be making deliberately, with the paperwork in front of you.
It is not normal for a company invoice. It is also the single most common pattern in supplier payment fraud, because a personal account is not connected to the company you verified. If a supplier insists, ask for written confirmation on company paper of the account holder's relationship to the company, and treat the answer as information about the supplier.
Many legitimate trading companies are registered recently to handle a specific product line. The question is who makes the goods. If the supplier cannot name the manufacturing entity, or the name given does not appear as a company at all, that is the signal rather than the age of the registration.
Six cover most of it: registry entry, status, scope, sanctions and export-control lists, account name against the legal name, and the inspection arrangement. That is the order we suggest in our guide on checks before a first payment.