Technical Resource

Container Scams: How to Verify a Seller Before You Pay

Fraud in container trading is not sophisticated. It repeats a small number of patterns, and almost all of them fail the same basic checks. The problem is that those checks are rarely done, because a buyer under time pressure, a vessel to load, a project to supply, a price that expires tomorrow, skips them.

7: Recurring fraud patterns
5: Checks before any payment
20 min: To verify any supplier
1 h: Window to recall a transfer

How to use this guide

This guide sets out the patterns, the signals that give them away, and a verification procedure you can run on any supplier in about twenty minutes. It applies to us as much as to anyone else. If a seller refuses any step below, you have your answer.

The Seven Patterns

The seven patterns

Fraud in this market is not inventive. Select a pattern to read how it presents itself, what gives it away, and the single action that defeats it.

PATTERN 01 · HIGH FREQUENCY
Stock that does not exist
A seller offers units at an attractive price in a location that suits you, and asks for a deposit to secure them. The photographs look right. The stock list is detailed. Nothing exists.
What gives it away
The depot cannot confirm the units when you contact it yourself, using a number you found independently. The photographs appear elsewhere online. The seller resists putting you in direct contact with the depot, or supplies a “depot contact” whose email is a free webmail address.
What to do
Never pay a deposit against stock you have not had confirmed by the depot holding it, through contact details you obtained yourself.

PATTERN 01 · HIGH FREQUENCY

Stock that does not exist

A seller offers units at an attractive price in a location that suits you, and asks for a deposit to secure them. The photographs look right. The stock list is detailed. Nothing exists.

What gives it away

The depot cannot confirm the units when you contact it yourself, using a number you found independently. The photographs appear elsewhere online. The seller resists putting you in direct contact with the depot, or supplies a “depot contact” whose email is a free webmail address.

What to do

Never pay a deposit against stock you have not had confirmed by the depot holding it, through contact details you obtained yourself.

On condition, age and pricing comparisons, see our CW vs WWT guide and the container buying guide.

The Verification Procedure

Five checks, twenty minutes, any supplier

Applied to any supplier, including one you have used before if something in the exchange has changed. Open a check to read how it is done.

Look up the registration number in the commercial register of its country, zefix.ch for Switzerland, Companies House for the United Kingdom, the national register elsewhere. Confirm the legal name, the address and the date of incorporation. Check the age of the domain. A company claiming twenty years of operation on a domain registered four months ago requires an explanation.

You should be dealing with a named person, not a generic mailbox. Find the company's telephone number on its own website or in the register, and call that number. Ask for the person you have been dealing with. This single step defeats cloned companies and compromised mailboxes at once.

Validate the ISO 6346 check digit of every reference. Look up the owner prefix. Confirm that the type and condition described match the reference given.

Obtain the depot's contact details yourself and ask it to confirm that the units exist, are in the stated condition, and are held to the seller's account. A depot will normally confirm the existence of stock held for a customer it works with.

Payment goes to a company account, in the name of the company you are contracting with. Payment requested to a personal account, or to an account in a name other than that company, is a strong signal whatever explanation accompanies it. For a first transaction, agree terms that protect both sides, inspection before final payment, staged payment against release, or a letter of credit for larger volumes. A counterparty who refuses any structure other than full payment in advance to an unfamiliar account is telling you something.

Check-digit validator

A container reference carries its own proof

Three owner letters, a category letter, six serial digits, and a final digit calculated from the ten before it. A fabricated number almost never satisfies that arithmetic.

This runs in your browser, on the same validator our own import pipeline uses. Nothing you type leaves this page. A correct check digit is necessary, not sufficient: confirm the owner prefix and the depot as well.

Live checkISO 6346 check digit

Container reference

Enter an eleven-character reference, for example CSQU3054383.

Red Flags

Nine signals, weighted

Tick the signals present in the exchange you are assessing. They are not equally serious, so each carries a weight, and the index reacts as you go.

Bank details changed by email, whatever the reason given.
Payment requested to a personal account, or to an account in a name other than the company you are contracting with.
The depot cannot or will not confirm the stock.
Container references whose check digit fails.
A domain registered recently for a company said to be long established.
Fees appearing after the offer was agreed.
Pressure to decide today, with an offer expiring tomorrow.
Refusal to take a call on a published number.
A price far below every other quote in the same port.

0Risk index

Nothing flagged yetTick anything you have observed in the exchange. The score updates as you go.

0 of 9 signals flagged. Nothing is stored or sent.

Legitimacy

What a serious supplier never refuses

A legitimate supplier has no difficulty proving any of this.

It is easier to identify a legitimate counterparty than a fraudulent one, because legitimacy shows in what a company accepts without argument.

What you ask, and what a serious supplier does
What you ask	A serious supplier
01Its registration	Will let you verify its registration
02A telephone call	Will take your call on its published number
03The depot	Will put you in touch with the depot
04The account	Will invoice from and be paid into an account in its own name
05Bank details	Will confirm any change of bank details by telephone first, on a number already published, before those details can be used for payment

None of these requests is unusual. None costs the supplier anything. A hesitation on any of them is itself the answer, and it is the fastest test in this guide.

If You Have Already Paid

Act in hours, not days

Recovery depends almost entirely on how fast the first call is made. The sequence below is ordered by the clock, not by importance.

01
Within the hour
- Contact your bank immediately and ask for a recall of the transfer. The chance of recovery falls sharply after the first day, and to near zero once the funds have been moved on. Do not wait for the seller to answer your emails first.
- Preserve everything. Full email headers, not forwarded copies. Bank references, invoices, chat logs, the domain name used. Evidence assembled in the first hours is worth more than anything reconstructed later.
02
Within 24 hours
- Report it to the police in your country, and keep the reference. Banks and insurers will ask for it, and a report is often what allows a receiving bank in another jurisdiction to act.
- Tell the depot and the prefix owner. If a depot or a lessor's containers were used as cover, they will want to know, and they are sometimes able to confirm quickly that the units were never held for that seller.
03
Within 48 hours
- Warn your own team. If a mailbox in your organisation was compromised, the same fraud is probably being attempted on your other suppliers.

Including Us

What to ask of any supplier

The checks in this guide are not adversarial. They are what any professional counterparty expects, and applying them costs a buyer twenty minutes against a transaction worth considerably more. The block opposite puts them in one message you can send before any transfer.

MG-Atlantic SA is registered in Switzerland under CHE-193.878.611, at Esplanade de Pont-Rouge 9A, 1212 Grand-Lancy, Geneva. The registration can be verified in the Swiss commercial register. Our telephone number is published on this site, and we will take your call on it.

We will never ask you to pay to new bank details on the strength of an email alone. If our banking details ever change, we will tell you by telephone first, and you will be able to confirm the new details by calling the number published on this site. Any message announcing new payment instructions without that call is fraudulent.

Ask the same of every supplier you deal with.

Send thisPaste into your email before any transfer

Your legal name, registration number and registered address, as filed in your national commercial register.
The name and direct telephone number of the person handling this transaction, on a number published by your company or by the register.
Written confirmation that the invoicing entity and the bank account are in that same company name, and that your bank details never change by email.
The depot holding the units, with its own contact details, so it can confirm the stock exists and is held to your account.
The full ISO 6346 container references, with the owner prefix and how it relates to your company.
The invoice from the contracting entity, and any release or gate-out document, so the issuing depot can confirm it.

Beyond supplier verification, MG-Atlantic also publishes documented payment defaults — cases of companies that received containers or container services and left invoices unpaid after formal notice. Resolved cases stay listed with their resolution.

Explore