Fraud and swindle in the floriculture sector - Cunning tricks of French couple

The way in which a French couple swindled traders and kept them on a short leash was pretty smart and shameless. At the time of this swindle, they already built a safety net in the form of a new flower shop. That way they could continue the swindle practice under a different name.

Below we share a blog post of Floridata, about the cunning scam of several traders by the aforementioned French couple.

The owners of a flower shop in a village in the South of France placed the first orders from Dutch exporters in March 2013. The first order was not delivered satisfactorily. At least that's what the Frenchman indicated when he blocked the direct debit. According to him, the products were lacking in freshness and quality. The unsatisfied new customer declared a claim.

Apart from the fact that the exporter could not imagine that there was something wrong with the freshness of the products, a large part of the delivery consisted of deco material. After a visit from an agent, the French woman admitted that it was silly to file a claim for it. She did not intend to return the items and so an arrangement was made for the payment for the deco materials. She immediately wrote a check for it. The claim for the fresh products was submitted and with that they had reached an agreement.

The check from the French woman didn’t clear. "That must be a mistake", the French couple indicated. However, the payments were not received and the couple also refused to return the deco materials. In the meantime, this exporter turned out to be not the only one who had noted this remarkable behavior and the absence of payments and was kept happy with receipts of payments that were never received. The bank balance was inadequate! 

At the same time another exporter delivered to this French flower shop, the Frenchman thought it would be useful to announce the payment with shipping documents from his online banking account. After a lot of contact and a visit, also this exporter was conned with a check that didn’t clear.

"The company was used as a kind of bank", one of the exporters indicated afterwards. This couple had timely prepared for the moment that the direct debits would be drawn and the Southern France flower shop would be declared bankrupt. In the meantime they had opened a new business. The money raised from the unpaid products was probably used to set up this new business. "Very clever, they even tried to arrange a shipment from us for the new business", indicates the debtor management of one of the duped exporters.

"Just as we closed this file, we got a new colleague, who was already familiar with the cunning tricks of this debtor and related problems. Unfortunately, we were not able to use this knowledge earlier and we had to suffered losses first. These people are known as crooks in their region! Fortunately, now here as well", says the debtor management of the other export company.

At least five Floridata participants were warned thanks to the reporting of these problems, so that further losses could be prevented. And the long-term advantage is that this story will always show up again at Floridata the moment the French couple tries to make a purchase for their new business!