The number of scam artists and fraudsters that purport to be legitimate Instrument Providers is currently at epic proportions. As a result of this, many well meaning and good faith clients have lost considerable monies to these phony Instrument Providers.

One main scheme of fake providers is to assert to their clients and to the monetizer that they, in fact, did send out a Swift (MT-799 and/or MT-760) when no swift was ever received by the Monetizer’s receiving Bank. This has caused untold delays in ascertaining whether the Swift was ever sent as a detailed search is usually undertaken to find this ‘missing’ Swift. Finally, after a lengthy effort, it is revealed that No Swift was ever sent and the client is left with no instrument and often times, at least Several Hundred Thousand Dollars poorer. In addition, the monetizer’s own relationship at their receiving Bank is damaged due to the fact that the monetizer was working with a Fraudulent Instrument.

As a result of this epidemic of fraudulent instruments, a procedure that our monetizer has put in place requires direct e-mail Banker to banker communication from the Instrument Provider’s Sending Bank’s bank officer to the Receiving Bank’s bank officer stating that the Sending Bank is RWA to issue a BG or SBLC by MT-760. The Bank Officer at the receiving Bank will reply by e-mail that they are RWA to receive the instrument. All e-mail communications must be done on a Banker-to-Banker basis using Bank e-mail addresses. In addition, the Bank contact phone number of the Sending Banker is obtained and the e-mail addresses and Sending Bank Officer’s phone number are validated by calling the Sending Bank’s main number.

For Fresh Cut Instruments we also ask the client to provide a copy of their contract with their Instrument Provider so that we can check the Instrument Provider in our ever growing data base to review any previous experience we have had with this Instrument Provider.

Our experience has been that when an Instrument Provider or client is unable to unwilling to follow this procedure, the likelihood of the instrument being fraudulent is very high and we will immediately pass on the file.

Also: I’ll also write dear friends carefully if you received a copy of a swift or a contract from scammers check this contract through the Bernard Group if you don’t understand bank documents send us to check, within 24 hours we will check any document!