I was using US/Japan numbers, at senior management to executive c-level for SME's (Small to Medium Enterprise). For China due diligence - divide roughly by 2 to 5, depending on developed east coast vs land-locked, such as Yunnan.

To professionally vet a project requires management allocate or re-allocate resources ranging from finance & legal, sales, and the technical team, so most professional companies have or should have a project/opportunity value threshold, to determine whether the engagement is potentially profitable (not including risk, clients shopping around, etc).

The companies must then analyze the sustainability and long-term growth of the opportunity - is it a one-off or does it have the potential for growth.

Professional business engagements, whether buying or selling are like investments - so most medium to large organizations have engagement processes, to vet the engagement.

The author was obviously lured by a large sale, but didn't have or exercise a mature engagement process, to include the due diligence portion, to weed out the chaff.

Chinese and third world countries are process weak - hence the prevalence of "relationship" based contracts - doing business at the c-level first, then assigning downstream staff to hammer out the details. Process rich firms tend to engage slower.

Smaller consulting firms move more rapidly (think special forces), but without sufficient intel (due diligence) or experience, tend to chase more dead or fraudulent leads.

ive emailed that email from multiple email accounts, no one replies. ive contacted the company over the phone and got the run around. from what i could gather it seems like you were bidding on a contract.. if they purchased flight tickets, or sent money and you have the bank info it would be easier to track down....youve only given accounts that you sent money to..

the account should be ok and Name also
well I just hope nobody else will spend Money like us - thats all. thank you for interest!

@laotou, WTF are you saying. im amaze how well verse you are in this field its like you calculated the probability of what instances plus the situation to say what is effective or not

but the guy just wrote this as a form of warning while a lot of people jump in to either offer sympathy or maybe help in what way

of course we cant take away the people that aside giving advise what to do next or should do next time around there are those who are special, its like out of the world context wanna be heard types that needs a podium to a tedx type of presentation.

you my friend are amazing, my hands down to you. even to those who try to analyze further the situation to prove what? that your sense of gut tells you your right.

the person who started the thread is clear already on his purpose, the guy just want to do business in china. he learned his bloody lesson already and its like your 2 cents of advise make him feel better

@shoei
international trade isn't a game for amateurs. @incomm made a major error in vetting the opportunity, so I give them the benefit of the doubt - always willing to help a legitimate business or someone trying to earn an HONEST living, time permitting. I defined the due diligence process for his firm to research, to help them develop an in-house process for vetting future opportunities.

The analysis of vetting opportunities - although the numbers may be off - since I haven't looked at this stuff internationally for over 15 years - the numbers should have gone up by around 2x, the 2008 financial crisis impacts notwithstanding. That was in response to comments marginalizing @incomm's company's loss. Although I'm sure it wasn't in the USD 100k regime - for them it was still a significant investment of time and resource, to include money out of pocket. The object was to understand that this kind of fraud doesn't just affect out of pocket costs for a few cases of cigarettes - it can have significant financial impact to struggling companies - especially SMEs (small to medium enterprises).

I didn't respond to @incomm to make him feel better about being sodomized by a group of thieves. I responded to offer sound professional advice - take it or leave it.

@incomm posted here to warn others about his company's experience - which indicates a degree of social responsibility, which I respect. So I responded out of respect, as opposed to proffering useless sympathetic rhetoric. I offered FREE professional consulting advice based on over 30 years of professional experience dealing with frauds, thieves, corrupt employees, corrupt managers, and occasionally, some seriously dangerous people, that you should hope you NEVER meet (introduced into our company by a well-meaning moron, hoping to score a derivative contract).

I am an eminent professional in this field and even I've been screwed, despite strong anti-fraud processes. I've experienced circumvention, political risk resulting in fraud to associated financiers (to the tune of USD 15 million) and significant financial loss to our firm, wasted bad faith negotiations with the legal rep for a major multinational during final contractual negotiations, resulting in some hefty legal bills that we had to write off as a loss (like USD 400k in legal fees). In this world - incompetence, negligence - doesn't matter whether you're well intentioned or not - you're still perceived as a fraud when you can't engage or negotiate professionally. We negotiate fairly. Buyers and sellers perceive this as a weakness to exploit - that's their dream. We're NOT stupid - just professional.

White collar fraud is globally pervasive even in developed countries and RARELY prosecuted - which is why it's pervasive and NOT limited to just China. It's pervasive in the USA and Japan also. Business is war and thieves and frauds (and incompetent negligent people) make it even more complicated.

International trade is an order of magnitude more complicated than domestic trade and also rife with fraud - even from established and regular clients. We have to analyze and account for force majeur issues such as political risk, war, social unrest, natural disasters, for continuation of operations and disaster recovery. That's the world of professionals and professional pro-active management, versus a clod of dirt.

I frequently come across as an abrasive, arrogant grade A A-hole - but that's the world I live in and THAT's the world that @incomm met. It's NOT a nice place. Fraud, waste, corruption are rampant - as the US sponsored global financial crisis eminently demonstrated. Those guys even paid themselves some seriously obscene bonuses after the US taxpayers bailed them out of the self-inflicted manure pile they about to drown in.

I wish @incomm the best in his future endeavors...the best way to do that is to offer advice based on world-class experience as opposed to useless feel-good rhetoric. Friends tell the truth - we don't attempt to lie and tell them everything's gonna be alright, because it's not if they don't change their fundamental modus operandi. If they're willing to listen - we point them in the right direction, so they don't repeat the mistake and hopefully avoid even more complicated and devious fraud schemes. Just telling someone to "be more careful in the future" is useless, moronic, imbecilic and deeply offensive advice. Better to just shut-up. If you REALLY sincerely care and respect the relationship (or in this case, the poster), you need to proffer something tangible, versus spectator back-seat driver type comments.

You may spend a few minutes to a few hours thinking about how to avoid frauds or for example, avoid being burglarized. A professional thief spends 7/24 planning and scheming on how to separate you from your money and valuables - both directly and indirectly. In a way - they're truly professional - but in a socially deviant manner. What could they accomplish if they set that scheming conniving mind to legitimate business?

Business is war - you have no friends and no family - but the goal is a mutual win-win relationship. Professional thieves prey on that.

If I wanted to be a person who says nice things - I would've started my career as a professional gigolo much earlier in life...and probably died of starvation in poverty, as it's not my nature. At executive level - we endeavor to negotiate directly or using the bizarre inuendo and hinting language of Asian execs (incredibly tiresome to analyze everything they say, body language, etc). I don't have time to waste being facetious, snide, or sarcastic. If you want to do business, let's talk business. If you want to show me how elegant and smart you are - go to a ktv and impress some hostess who might be impressed by such behavior.

Buyer AND Sellers Beware.

+ if we keep posting on this thread, it will stay on the top for a long time, so everybody will read it ( the warning ), therefore @incomm's thread feeds the purpose :-)

@incomm
Aside from the above rant - take a look at the FIDIC (fidic.org) document, titled FIDIC Procurement Procedures Guide, to understand how professional international procurement should work. If the company you're negotiating with doesn't understand these procedures - you can implement them. The UN and the ADB use many FIDIC contracts and procedures (to include Tendering), but harmonized for the unique requirements of those multilateral, multinational financiers.

It's a HUGE document at 249 pages, but should help you considerably. When you engage a buyer or seller - you should also have an idea of what kind of boilerplate contract you'll need to use, so FIDIC contracts can teach you how to negotiate - i.e. General Conditions (the boilerplate) and the Particular Conditions (colloquially known in the USA as detailed or specific terms and conditions).

For payment - you'll need to get up to speed on the various forms of financial documentary credits (letters of credit, standby letters of credit, bank guarantees, etc ad infinitum) and the various international rules that govern these documents (URDG and UCP 600, depending on whether your dealing with US or EU firms).

These are the international world class standards for doing business. Good enough for the UN, so should be ludicrous overkill for your firm.

FIDIC contracts were used in China, for major development projects with foreign firms, when China first opened up - in the multi-billion dollar strata. When you know what world class is - you can then learn to pick and choose (aka harmonize) what works for you. FIDIC contracts are even translated into Chinese.

If you do contracts in China, you should use Chinese versions of the contracts, as Chinese courts of law rarely rule on English-language contracts - especially in the less developed regions of China.

Think this way - if you're in Russia and I wanted to do business with you and demanded the contract be in Chinese - which court of law in Russia would (or could) actually competently hear, much less rule on that case.

Foreign companies - especially American companies, used to demand English language contracts dominate under Chinese law, then when things go wrong - they complain about how lawless and unfair the Chinese business environment is for foreign companies - now THAT's arrogant, or more appropriately - incredibly world-class stupid.

Hi Bro, I had a similar experience with the same company a few months ago, send me your e-mail, to send more information and details, It's unfortunate that such people exist.

Hello Morpheus,

info at incomm-agentur.de - we are selling russian Iron ore DAP chinese border ( by trail) . 63%.

best regards

Heloo
Is the same story ... contacted me in Asian Metals
I work as a broker and received the following email in March 2014.

Dear Sir

We come from China Kunming Iron & Steel Holding Co.,Ltd., our company long-term needs import of iron ore . We are real buyers, we get information from the CCPIT, your company have intention to sell iron ore, if the information is correct, please contact me as soon as possible, we,ll discuss in more detail, our email is chinaynkg@163.com

waiting for reply

Best regards

Miao Jiajun

Executive director

昆 明 钢 铁 控 股 有 限 责 任 公 司
Kunming Iron & Steel Holding Co., Ltd.
Adress: Caopu Town, Anning City, Yunnan Province

Tel: 86-871-68333179 Fax: 86-871-68227487

E-mail: chinaynkg@163.com

www.ynkg.com

this man contacted for ore Iron and Titanium from Brasil