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A Polish-linked scam machinery website targeting farmers has been uncovered by the Irish Farmers Journal.
The scam company, operating under the name Global Trader, has a convincingly sophisticated website with an address and contact details in London and Poland.
Undercover investigation by the Irish Farmers Journalrevealed that the company requests a 60% deposit on machinery be paid to a bank account with a Polish identifier code.
“You will not be charged for delivery in Ireland and also the unit will come with 12-month complete warranty,” emails from the scam company read.
An Irish farmer with concerns regarding the website initially contacted this newspaper after reading a previous report of a Russian-linked tractor scam.
He became suspicious when the scam company offered him a 20% discount on the machine he was looking at and felt the deal was too good to be true.
The Polish scam company also claims to be part of a company called CF Global Trading Ltd, worth £2m, with an address in London that matches the address on the scam website.
The scam company appears to have assumed the identity of this legitimate company and even provides a registered company number which matches accounts from CF Global Trading Ltd.
When CF Global Trading Ltd was contacted by the Irish Farmers Journal, it stated that it had reported the scam website multiple times. “That company [Global Trader] is a fraud and we have nothing to do with them,” managing director of the legitimate CF Global Trading Ltd Scott Chase said.
“We’ve been trying to get it taken down multiple times over the past year but it keeps popping back up.”
The scam website describes itself as offering “genuine” and “affordable” machinery and offers free delivery worldwide.
This newspaper also called both numbers on the website. The calls were answered by an automated voice machine, with one call traced to London and the other to the Isle of Arran in Scotland.
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