SCAMPATROL

[winelight]

Who it is targeted at:

Legitimate businesses, exporters, probably in East Asia.

How the scam works
1) Lad poses as an importer to (usually) Nigeria.
2) Lad contacts a manufacturer by email, says he wants to buy lots of stuff from them.
3) At some point in the negotiation, lad says "oh, I just realised your product is not registered in Nigeria. You need to contact a lawyer to sort this out for you. Here is one who can do it, this is his email address".
4) Asian businessman contacts lawyer (who is really the lad, or perhaps another member of the gang).
5) Lawyer demands a fee...

Difficult to detect or disrupt
It's not going to be easy to find people operating these scams, or disrupt their activities, because they are only targeting legitimate businesses.
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also operating as Sandie Hobson

[klaasvaak]

This scam is a pain in the ass.
The scammer places an advert on www.alibaba.com (or something similar) , that he wants to buy goods (sugar, marbles and tea are used a lot) and the seller contacts them first. The problem is that no company checks the buyer/scammer. This could be done by going to your local chamber of commerce and ask for info about the scammer/buyer.

If you want to bait these guys look for odd adverts on online trading places, like alibaba and trade-india

edited: typo

[churchmouse]

Some time ago I saw lots of the lads on these sites and couldn' tfigure out what they were doing.Thanks for the alert!
NOw it's obvious that they were setting up the scams.
Thanks for clearing up this mystery!

[winelight]

Thanks klaasvaak, that's useful information and we know how to bait them now.

EDIT: except that they only accept quotations from paid members.

Clever!
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also operating as Sandie Hobson

[klaasvaak]

[klaasvaak]

Interesting:

See what happens when you tell the scammer you have looked up the company at the chamber of commerce

[lew_skannen]

Slap the prick. We have whatever rights we want.