Avoiding scams in the coffee trade

The scams to know

• Fake seller: a too-good price, pressure to decide fast, and a demand for full payment in advance. The coffee never ships.
• Changed bank details: a message that looks like it comes from your real supplier says the bank account has changed. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center calls this business email compromise and recorded 241,206 incidents with exposed losses of over $43 billion worldwide between June 2016 and December 2021.
• False or altered documents: a bill of lading, certificate of origin or phytosanitary certificate that does not match the shipment, or does not exist.
• Bait and switch: the sample is excellent but the shipped coffee is not. CBI notes that the shipped coffee must match the approved pre-shipment sample.
• Fake buyer: a "buyer" asks a producer to pay fees, buy certificates from a named agent or ship on open account to an unknown company.

Red flags

• Prices far below the market or the origin's usual differential.
• Refusal to send a sample, or to let you cup the actual lot.
• Payment requested to a personal account, a third party or a country unrelated to the seller.
• A company that cannot show an export licence or registration.
• Urgency: "another buyer will take it today".
• Contact moves away from the platform before any contract exists.

Check the licence

Ask for the exporter's licence or registration and confirm it with the authority, not with a phone number in the email. In Colombia every coffee exporter must be in the FNC's exporter register. In Kenya, coffee buyers, millers and warehouses are licensed by the Coffee Board of Kenya and brokers by the Capital Markets Authority under the Coffee Act, 2026. Our Kenya export guide explains which licence each role needs.

Check the documents

• Certificate of origin: under ICO rules, each export lot carries an identification mark in the form country/exporter/lot (or a customs consignment reference), which should match the bags and the invoice.
• Phytosanitary certificate: issued by the national plant protection body, for example KEPHIS in Kenya.
• Bill of lading: confirm with the shipping line, using contact details you found yourself, that the container and vessel exist.
• Quality certificate: where the origin issues one, check the lot number and grade against the contract.

Protect the payment

Tie payment to documents. Cash against documents and letters of credit mean the buyer pays when proof of shipment is presented, not before (CBI; U.S. International Trade Administration). Cash in advance puts all the risk on the buyer, and open account puts it on the seller. If bank details change, confirm by phone with a person you know, on a number you already had, before paying anything.

Protect the quality

Approve a pre-shipment sample drawn from the actual lot, keep part of it sealed, and compare the arrival sample against it. Write the grade, moisture, defects and cup score into the contract, and use a standard contract: the ITC Coffee Guide notes that the ECF and GCA contracts, both with arbitration, are the most used. See how to buy green coffee directly.

How Coffee Parchment helps

• Every account must use two-step login.
• A Verified badge means we checked a licence or registration by hand. It is not a guarantee, so still do your own checks.
• Phone numbers and emails are shared only after an offer is accepted, and you can report any listing or member.
• Our safety centre has checklists for buyers and sellers and what to do if something goes wrong.

If it happens to you

Contact your bank at once and ask it to recall or freeze the payment; speed matters. Report the fraud to the police, in the United States to the FBI's IC3, and report the member or listing to us so we can warn others.