Thread: How to Check a Chinese Scam Site

The following six red rags are simply a list of indicators, which in isolated terms, may or may not mean anything; however, when found all together, should ring some alarm bells. As with anything in business or life, the whole is greater than the sum of its’ parts.

1. The Site.
There is such site, it has an absence of any Chinese version for its’ own pages. This means they’re targeting only one group of prospects – foreigners. Generally, companies in China that have Chinese and English versions of their pages are usually genuine, as they’re making themselves accessible to the home market too; particularly for companies dealing in electronics, phones, and computers. An absence of such, may, but not always, indicate a potential scam site.

2. Contact Information.
All the email addresses are “Hotmail” or “Yahoo”; there is a distinct absence of a company email address. This in and of itself doesn’t carry too much weight, as many genuine Chinese companies operate with free email addresses. However, it is a common enough marker amongst the scammers. This wouldn’t usually be the case for a technology company, as they’d normally have to have an official office, and storage facilities out of mere necessity.

3. Company Registration Number.
Of course, as a legally registered business entity, they’d need to have a business registration number. When once you have that number, you can go to the Ministry of Commerce page for contact details of the Local Administrations office, and try to get the data for the government business registration office in the city, and the province where they claim to be registered. You can then email, fax, or phone requesting to know if this number matches a genuine business.

4. Unbeatable Offer.
This one is a complete no-brainer; if the price seems too good to be true – then it’s a scam.

5. Payment.
Ask if the company will accept an L/C (Letter of Credit); if they only take Western Union, Money Gram, and the likes, then they’re more than likely a scammer.

6. IP Check.
Run an IP address check on the company and see how many other web addresses they have registered to them.

Thank you for the tips! I would like to add some more. They're pretty obvioius but still....

It will probably fall under #6.
Check the website address with something like domaintools. If there seems to be no connection between the company and the actual owner of the site, it might be a red flag. Other points that usually raise my suspicion are:
- the contact email of the website's owner is at a free domain like @163.com or something
- the company registered as the website's owner is headquartered in another country, not where the company is conducting their business transactions from

Another thing that comes to mind is to obviously google the company's name and contact details for " name_of_company_etc + scam". You may also want to try different modifications of the name, for example, Such-and-such Machinery or Such-of-such Equipment etc.

If you're a buyer, don't make 100% advanced payment. If the company asks for a transfer through Western Union or similar, and especially if they want the funds to be transferred to their CEO's personal account with an excuse of it being a very small order with a very big discount (sic!), it's very likely a scam.

And finallly, all of bjsteele's tips should be appied not only to Chinese companies but to whichever you're not sure of.

Excellent tips, everyone. It really boggles my mind how scammers are able to still get people tricked, but this is a great list of tips to help people from losing their cash.

Thank you for your supplement.

Originally Posted by ValdiPro

Thank you for the tips! I would like to add some more. They're pretty obvioius but still....

It will probably fall under #6.
Check the website address with something like domaintools. If there seems to be no connection between the company and the actual owner of the site, it might be a red flag. Other points that usually raise my suspicion are:
- the contact email of the website's owner is at a free domain like @163.com or something
- the company registered as the website's owner is headquartered in another country, not where the company is conducting their business transactions from

Another thing that comes to mind is to obviously google the company's name and contact details for " name_of_company_etc + scam". You may also want to try different modifications of the name, for example, Such-and-such Machinery or Such-of-such Equipment etc.

If you're a buyer, don't make 100% advanced payment. If the company asks for a transfer through Western Union or similar, and especially if they want the funds to be transferred to their CEO's personal account with an excuse of it being a very small order with a very big discount (sic!), it's very likely a scam.

And finallly, all of bjsteele's tips should be appied not only to Chinese companies but to whichever you're not sure of.