Cross-Border Logistics Proxy-Payment Scam: Sellers are scammed out of payments and contact is lost after fraudsters forge waybills and customs clearance records

Who Gets Targeted

The victims are primarily cross-border e-commerce sellers, foreign trade factories, and small-to-medium cargo owners. Anxious to ship goods or turn over capital, and lacking deep familiarity with international logistics processes, they easily fall for the low-price 'double clearance and tax-inclusive' (DDP) services promised by forwarders. Exploiting sellers' anxiety over delivery schedules and their desire to compress costs, the scams use pitches such as 'pay shipping fees on your behalf first, settle later' and 'fast customs clearance through internal channels' to induce payment. Some sellers remain completely unaware even after their goods are detained or their payments are embezzled.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Fake forwarders post low-price DDP ads on logistics platforms or industry groups, offering quotes significantly below market rates and claiming internal connections to expedite customs clearance. They use hooks such as 'same-day shipping, all-inclusive, money-back if unsuccessful' to attract sellers' attention and obtain contact details.
• Step 2: They forge business licenses, logistics qualifications, and screenshots of recent pending waybills in the name of legitimate companies, and even impersonate the official websites and emails of well-known brands such as Kuehne+Nagel, creating a trustworthy image. Fraudsters send quotes and contracts using high-imitation emails with sign-offs extremely similar to those of genuine companies, making it hard for sellers to notice unless they carefully check the domain name.
• Step 3: After the seller makes payment, the fraudsters provide a fake tracking number and a forged online logistics trajectory—typically showing that the goods have departed the port, arrived at the destination port, or are currently undergoing customs clearance—while the actual goods were never shipped or have been intercepted. In some scams, the goods are genuinely shipped but intercepted midway and held hostage for a price hike, with fraudsters demanding additional payments under pretexts like 'customs inspection' or 'tariff increases.'
• Step 4: After the seller pays extra customs clearance fees, inspection fees, or deposits, the fraudsters continue to delay delivery, ultimately intercepting and reselling the goods or running away with the funds directly. In certain cases, fraudsters also use courier stations to receive and send fraudulent goods, packaging regular courier parcels as high-value shipments and turning freight drivers into relay tools.
• Step 5: Before and after losing contact, the fraudsters cancel payment-receiving accounts, turn off phones and social media accounts, or switch business entities to continue scamming. When victims file complaints with platforms, recovery is often difficult due to insufficient evidence or because the counterparties have already deregistered; police investigations are also prolonged due to cross-regional and multi-stage factors.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Quotes are far below the market average—typically over 20% lower—and repeatedly emphasize 'double clearance and tax-inclusive' and 'guaranteed customs clearance.'
• 🚩 The freight forwarder cannot provide a genuine business address verifiable on an official website, insists on communicating only via WeChat or QQ, and refuses video verification.
• 🚩 The logistics tracking trajectory queried via the waybill number shows abnormalities, such as frequent entries and exits through customs within a short timeframe, or an unreasonable duration spent at customs.
• 🚩 Requests to transfer shipping and customs clearance fees into personal accounts or third-party accounts mismatched with the company name, rather than corporate accounts.
• 🚩 Excuses such as 'internal operations' or 'special channels' are used to bypass formal contracts, refusing to provide invoices or providing only vague electronic receipts.
• 🚩 After receiving payments, they frequently demand additional fees under pretexts like customs, ports, or epidemics, with each amount being relatively small, attempting to boil the frog in warm water.

真实案例

• In April 2026, CCTV's 'Rule of Law Online' reported on the 'all-inclusive cross-border e-commerce' scam, where bad actors forged a large number of fake orders under the guise of operations outsourcing and logistics fulfillment, defrauding sellers of product payments and proxy-shipping funds amounting to several million yuan. Multiple sellers reported the cases, leading to formal police investigations.
• In August 2026, police in Wuxi, Jiangsu reported that a courier station had become a fraud 'relay hub.' After freight drivers noticed abnormal parcels and reported them, police intercepted the packages and seized over 200,000 yuan in fraudulent assets, uncovering a chain that utilized express logistics to transfer illicit funds.
• In 2025, a foreign trade company received a bill of lading and fee confirmation from a high-imitation forwarder email, mistakenly wiring a huge shipping fee to the fraudsters' account. Part of the funds was recovered later following mediation jointly conducted by the court and 'foreign uncles', with public reports revealing that the email domain used by the fraudsters differed from the real company by only a single character.
• In August 2026, CCTV's 'Rule of Law Online' exposed a fraud relay hub case at a courier station in Wuhan: starting in October 2025, the syndicate illegally transferred over 70 fraudulent express packages involving more than 1.5 million yuan. Courier station manager Deng was responsible for assigning pickup tasks and taking commissions, and the Hongshan Branch of the Wuhan Public Security Bureau tracked the clues to arrest the upstream and downstream syndicates led by Gao. (Source: [https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260812A0951N00](https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260812A0951N00))
• In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice reported on a fake waybill case involving a Chinese freight forwarder in Los Angeles: a Chinese woman surnamed Chen pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and use of counterfeit postage. Her and her husband Hu's parcel transportation company transported goods for cross-border logistics enterprises via the US Postal Service (USPS) and forged online shipping labels to save on postage. The postal authorities seized over 340,000 fake label packages and 7.7 million fake stamps, preventing $7.8 million in losses, with evaded shipping fees approaching 1.1 billion yuan. (Source: [https://www.pai.com.cn/244572.html](https://www.pai.com.cn/244572.html))

Official Stance

• In April 2026, CCTV's 'Rule of Law Online' program reported on the 'all-inclusive cross-border e-commerce' scam, warning sellers to be vigilant against fake orders and proxy-payment risks.
• In August 2026, police in Wuxi, Jiangsu released an official police briefing exposing the tactic of courier stations being used as fraud relay hubs, reminding logistics practitioners and sellers to identify abnormal deliveries.
• In June 2026, Taiwan's Ministry of Justice and consumer protection agencies issued a warning regarding 'customs parcel detention' text message scams, pointing out a surge in cross-border online shopping fake tax bill scams, and urging the public not to click unknown links and to retain transaction receipts.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Verify the freight forwarder's identity through the logistics company's official website or customer service hotline before placing an order, checking their business license and operating qualifications via public channels. Never use links sent by the other party for verification.
• ✅ Insist on using corporate accounts or platform-guaranteed escrow transactions for payments, and refuse to transfer money to personal accounts, uncontracted accounts, or irreversible methods such as 'Alipay password red envelopes' or 'virtual currencies.'
• ✅ After receiving a waybill number, proactively check the logistics trajectory on the carrier's official website or the State Post Bureau's official website. If trajectory abnormalities are found, immediately contact official customer service to verify and do not blindly trust screenshots.
• ✅ Save all chat logs, contracts, transfer receipts, and waybill details. Once you realize you have been scammed, report it to the police immediately, file a complaint with the logistics platform, and apply to freeze the involved accounts.