I've lost count of how many times someone has messaged us asking how to recover a wire they sent to a Telegram contact. The pitch was always good. The price was sharp, the photos looked clean, the seller was responsive for forty eight hours. Then the deposit went, the number stopped working, and the goods never moved.
Here's the checklist we wish every first time wholesale buyer would run before they wire money. Each item takes minutes to verify. If a seller fails any one of them, pause the deal until it's resolved. The buyers who survive in this business are the ones who walk away from nine offers out of ten, not the ones who chase volume.
1. They refuse to do a live video call
Any legitimate liquidator will spend five minutes on video walking you through the warehouse. They will pan across pallets, hold up a labelled box, show you the actual goods. If your seller invents reasons to skip this ("the warehouse is closed today", "video doesn't work in our country"), you're talking to a broker who doesn't have the stock, or to nobody at all.
What to do: insist on a live call. Not a recorded clip, not a fifteen second WhatsApp video. Live, with your face on screen too, asking the seller to point the camera at a specific corner.
2. The price is more than 30% below comparable wholesale
Real overstock and closeout deals trade 20 to 40% below standard wholesale, sometimes deeper on end of season lots. But if someone offers Nike Air Max at $12 a pair when the genuine wholesale floor is $35, you're looking at counterfeits, stolen freight, or a scam.
What to do: cross check the price against at least three sources. Buystocklot, B2BZone, broker chat groups. If nobody else has it that cheap, the price isn't real.
3. They want the full payment up front via wire
Industry standard is 30% deposit on confirmation, 70% against shipping documents. Bill of lading copy, packing list, container number. If a seller insists on 100% before the goods move, especially to a personal bank account or to a third country shell, you have zero leverage when the container doesn't show up.
What to do: counter propose 30/70. A real seller will accept it. A scammer will pressure you with "we have other buyers, decide today".
4. The company has no verifiable footprint
Search the company name plus the year they say they were founded. A real liquidator that has been moving FMCG, electronics, or apparel for five years will have a trade license, a Google Maps pin, a LinkedIn page with employees, and reviews somewhere. A fresh Gmail with no other digital trace is the most common scam signature.
What to do: pull up the trade registry in the country they claim to operate from. UAE, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy, Germany all have free public lookups. Two minutes of work.
5. The product photos are recycled
Reverse image search every photo they send. If the same pallet appears on a Telegram channel from 2023, on a Facebook group from 2024, and now in your inbox from a "Romanian supplier", nobody actually owns those goods.
What to do: Google Lens or TinEye. Then ask for a fresh photo with today's date written on a piece of paper next to the pallet. Real sellers don't blink at that request.
6. They refuse to use escrow or a verified marketplace
Marketplaces like Buystocklot exist to put a trust layer between buyers and sellers who have never met. Even without escrow handling the money, a verified seller badge means someone else has already checked the trade license, bank account, and warehouse address.
What to do: move the conversation onto a marketplace with KYB verified sellers. If your contact refuses, that tells you everything.
7. The contract avoids inspection rights
Every clean wholesale contract has an inspection clause. The buyer, or the buyer's agent, has the right to inspect goods at origin before shipment. Pre shipment inspections from QIMA, Intertek, or SGS cost a few hundred dollars on a 50k container. Cheap insurance.
What to do: insist on inspection rights in the contract. If the seller pushes back, walk away. They are hiding something. Wrong quantity, wrong condition, or no goods at all.
The bottom line
None of these checks are hard. The hard part is having the discipline to actually run the list when a deal looks too good and the seller is rushing you. The buyers who never get burned are not the smartest, they are the slowest. They walk away from nine offers out of ten, and the one that survives the checklist is the one that ships.
Stay patient. Verify everything. And if you've already been scammed once, you're not stupid. Every long term B2B buyer has at least one war story. Just don't repeat it.