If it seems too good to be true...

I got scammed on Friday. It was the first time I've ever been taken by a fuel advance identity theft scammer and it sucked pretty bad. Basically I had a bad feeling about the person but they passed every kind of verification we threw at them. I did the load because it was making a solid profit (400 on a 3600 dollar load) and I figured I was just being paranoid, because that's a thing that happens to me.

Yeah they weren't who they said they were. The carrier we thought we were doing business with had had their stuff compromised and all their information ON THE OFFICIAL SITES was changed. The scammers spoke good english and knew trucking. They were good at their job. The only thing that tipped me off was them being slightly too free with the negotiation.

I wish I had listened to my gut. Now I'm out 1250.

 

Live and learn. I've already adapted our security process slightly to catch this.

 

Unfortunately fuel advances are a necessary evil. As for making less on the load, that wasn't the problem. They were a legitimate looking and sounding carrier. I wasn't cutting any corners by using them. She said she could go as low as 3000 and I told her 3200 was fine. I did that because (silly me) I didn't want her to fall out on me in an hour when she found out she could do 400 better. Even a decent truck will magically get a flat tire in that situation. That under offer was literally the only suspicious thing she did. And she told me she was a new dispatcher to make that make sense.

Trust me guys I pay what the market charges... but I'd lose a lot more than 1250 over a multi year period by not using the random 200 under market good trucks that magically want to go exactly where my load goes. Those people are like gifts from the freight gods to us poor brokers lol.

 

A much more sophisticated version of that yeah. One of the more common scam types. Was the first time I've ever been hit and the first time in 3-4 years for my brokerage. Someone tries at least once every couple of weeks.