AM Trading BV, as a part of STMP Group, puts utmost efforts to prevent scams and fraudulent activities.

Since the anti-coronavirus measures started to be implemented all over the world, we also spotted an increase of scammers’ activities. Therefore, please find below the updated information necessary for fraud prevention.

Starting from 2018, we received an information from various counterparties that a group of unknown individuals began to act under the company name STMP Holdings BV performing illegal activities, such as fraud and identity theft. They use details of an actual company called STMP Holding BV, referring to an actual and/or outdated information of the company available from the public sources.

The unknown individuals contact potential buyers via various online platforms where wholesale traders offer various types of goods. The commonly known (but not limited to) contact person who claims that he acts on behalf of STMP Holdings BV is called Joshen Geil (we believe that it is a fictitious name).

By having documentation and email communication at hand provided by various counterparties (incl. fraud victims), we would like to highlight the following.

The invoices issued by “STMP Holdings BV” to potential victims always contain bank details of another entity. Usually these bank accounts related to random individuals. If potential victim has a question regarding this matter, the fraudsters will always have a reason to explain that, e.g. “you will pay directly to the supplier”, “this is our sales representative”, etc.

We also encountered cases when the fraudsters created a fake carrier website where the potential victim can validate a fake airway bill by having tracking code provided by the fraudsters.

Based on the abovementioned information, we would like to give an advice on what should you do before entering into a deal/transaction with an unknown party:

– Always do research on the company (e.g. chamber of commerce info, other public sources), to verify the data provided by the counterparty, incl. contact persons.

– Whether name of the company on the invoice and bank account details are different.

– Bank details might be of an individual, not a company. Check with your bank whether they can confirm that the account number corresponds with an entity name.

– If name and details are the same, make sure that it is the same party you are in contact with.

– Be cautious with email domain names. Not all the businesses have their own email domains, however, if they do some fraudsters still can use publicly available email services to mimic the real business entity (e.g. by having the same name but different top-level domain – for example, .eu instead of .nl).

– In addition, please also be cautious when you see that your counterparty is using anonymous email services (for example, ProtonMail).

We hereby state, that STMP Holding BV is not involved in any sort of business activities and is used for assets holding purposes only. We have reported all of the cases to the respective enforcement agencies. STMP Group does not tolerate any kind of fraudulent/scam activities and will do its best to make it public and enforce the abusers. If you faced with abovementioned fraud in the past or currently have been approached by these scammers, please contact us via emails below.

info@tradeam.nl

info@stmp-group.nl

For more information on how to avoid scams, please visit https://www.fraudehelpdesk.nl/