China Scams and Naming Names. Or Not.

Our China lawyers get a steady stream of emails from companies seeking our help in recovering money lost in China scams or just telling us about the scams and asking us to report the scammers to “the police, the government, the State Department, the Embassy, and/or the consulate. Many of these emails also request that we write about the particular scammer on our blog or on our China Law Blog Facebook page.

Less than one percent of the time we probe a little further to see if there is any chance at all of a financial recovery, and we do so only in those matters where the losses are in the six figures or higher. We never report anyone to anyone and we never name names here on the blog.

Why not?

We don’t report anyone to anyone because if we did so we would be spending hours a day doing so and all without pay. We cannot just take what someone tells us and go to anyone with it as their lawyers. Our job as lawyers is to do our best to determine what is true and what isn’t and to dig into the facts to come up with as much as possible that might be helpful to government and law enforcement authorities in finding the culprits. Equally important, I have serious doubts that any government body in any country does much with these scams. So instead we tell the writers that they should do these things on their own.

Why though do we not name names here on the blog? Why don’t we have a list of scammers on here? For the following two reasons.

In many cases of alleged fraud, it is not clear at all that there has been a fraud. Here is one recent example. A Mexican company bought $60,000 in t-shirts from a Chinese clothing company. The Chinese clothing company sent the requisite quantity of t-shirts and the Mexican company alleges that they were of such poor quality as to be a scam. Was it a scam? I have no idea. Did the Mexican company have a written contract with the Chinese company specifying the quality of t-shirts it would be buying? I have no idea. Did the Mexican company spend $10 per t-shirt or $1 per t-shirt? I have no idea.

In many (most?) cases of alleged fraud, the name of the company is NOT the company that committed the fraud. Fraudsters often claim to be with a particular legitimate Chinese company but they really are not and a quick check of their email address reveals this. Guess what, people. It is extremely unlikely that a legitimate Alibaba employee will be emailing you from a qq email account. Many times the person behind the fraud is not Chinese and is not based in China; they are simply claiming to be with a Chinese company to pull off the fraud. We are not going to list company names when we have zero clue whether the names of the companies listed had anything at all to do with the alleged fraud.

I do note though that there are many sites that do name names and it does make sense to do an internet search before you send it money. Indeed, in most cases, additional due diligence is warranted.  See China Business Due Diligence.

Your thoughts?

We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.