Export scams when sourcing commodities from Brazil, and how to recognise one

The short answer

Commodity fraud aimed at foreign buyers of Brazilian goods concentrates in specific products and repeats a recognisable shape. The clearest single marker is a price set well below the market, followed by contract language that asks you to prove your money before the seller proves the goods. Sugar is the classic vehicle for it.

Defence is two separate skills. One is recognition: spotting the offer that was never real, before you engage with it. The other is verification: checking the company against Brazil's free public registers, so that a supplier who claims years of export history but does not exist in the records fails the check on paper. Recognition keeps you out of the obvious traps. Verification catches the seller who is presentable enough to get past the first read.

Neither is about protecting a payment once it is in motion. That is a different job, covered on protecting an advance payment. Here the question is narrower: is the counterparty, and the offer, real.

Why ICUMSA 45 sugar is a higher-risk zone

Refined white sugar, graded ICUMSA 45, comes up more than any other Brazilian commodity in scam offers reaching foreign buyers. It helps to be precise about what is documented and what is not, because the internet is full of confident claims here.

There is no confirmed official warning, from Brazilian authorities or anyone else, about a specific "ICUMSA 45 scam" or an "advance payment for inspection" scheme tied to Brazilian sugar. Pages that present one as an official alert are commercial: broker sites and trader posts, not government or ICC material. Do not trust a source that dresses a sales pitch as a regulator's warning. If we cite a warning, it has a name and a date behind it.

What is documented is broader and older, and it fits sugar squarely. The ICC's Commercial Crime Services recorded a commodity fraud pattern in a publication dated 22 November 2006. The date is old. The pattern it describes has not moved, and the ICC named sugar, iron ore and scrap among the goods that turned up in these approaches, alongside cement and urea.

The first sign the ICC identified was price. In its words, the schemes centred on "the offering of goods well below market value and fake documentation". A sugar offer priced clearly under the going rate is the opening move of the pattern, not a windfall. Physical ICUMSA 45 trades in a known band; an approach that undercuts it by a wide margin is describing a deal that does not exist.

The second sign is the contract language. The ICC listed the phrases that recur in these offers, and they read as a checklist:

Red-flag term in the offer	What it signals
"Advance Payment Bank Guarantee"	The seller wants your money, or a bank's money on your behalf, committed before anything ships
"Bank Comfort" letter	A request to prove your bank standing on the seller's terms, early and out of sequence
"Proof of Funds"	The same test, aimed at confirming you can pay before the goods are ever shown
"Non-circumvention / Non-Disclosure" (NCND) letter presented as a precondition to trading	Framing secrecy and a chain of intermediaries as the price of entry

The ICC flagged other markers around these: an unsolicited approach by email or through a string of intermediaries, a false claim about where the goods originate, and forged seller details, with some of the people involved already recorded in the ICC's Financial Investigation Bureau. None of this is unique to sugar. Sugar is simply where a foreign buyer is most likely to meet it, because ICUMSA 45 is a standard, liquid grade that a fraudster can quote without knowing anything real about a mill.

The honest position, then, is this. There is no Brazil-specific sugar-scam alert to point you to. There is a general commodity fraud pattern, on record with the ICC since 2006, and sugar is named in it. That pattern is enough to work with, and it is the only thing here we would present as documented.

The fake ICC rules test

There is a second marker that is cleaner than any of the above, because you can check it in seconds and it gives a yes or no answer.

Fraudulent offers routinely cite ICC rules that do not exist. In a warning dated 1 April 2005, the ICC cautioned against documents referring to "ICC Regulations 400/500/600", "ICC Prove and Move Rules" and fictitious NCND agreements, used on get-rich-quick sites in deals involving currency, commodities, gold and financial instruments. The ICC states plainly that there is no such thing as "UCP 700".

The real rule is UCP 600. That is the current, and only current, set of rules for documentary credits, in force since 1 July 2007. So the test is direct. When a counterparty's paperwork invokes a rule by number, hold it against the genuine one. "UCP 600" is real. "UCP 700", "ICC 400/500/600 rules", "Prove and Move", an NCND agreement waved about as if it were an ICC instrument: these are markers the ICC has named as fraud. A document that cites a rule you can look up and find does not exist is telling you what it is. The ICC's own advice is to know the genuine rules and to verify a doubtful offer through its Commercial Crime Bureau.

This works as a test precisely because a real exporter's bank paperwork will reference real instruments, and a fabricated offer, assembled from other fabricated offers, tends to carry the same invented citations from one deal to the next.

Company legitimacy: the red flags and where they show

Recognition handles the offer. Verification handles the company. A Brazilian legal entity leaves a public trail, and the useful part of that trail is that a paper exporter cannot fake all of it at once. The checks below are free, most need no login, and each one turns a claim into something you can look at.

Red flag	How it shows in the record	Where to check
CNPJ does not exist, or is not active	The Comprovante de Inscrição shows a status other than ATIVA (SUSPENSA, INAPTA, BAIXADA or NULA), or the CNPJ returns nothing at all. BAIXADA and NULA mean the entity is effectively gone; it cannot invoice	Receita Federal CNPJ lookup
Company registered recently, against a claim of long export experience	The Data de Abertura on the CNPJ card contradicts the "we have shipped for fifteen years" story	Receita Federal CNPJ lookup
Name mismatch	The razão social on the CNPJ does not match the seller's name on the invoice or contract, or the account you are asked to pay belongs to a third party that is not the registered company	Receita Federal CNPJ lookup
Activity does not match the goods	The main and secondary CNAE codes on the card have nothing to do with the product. A company registered for consulting is offering to ship beef	Receita Federal CNPJ lookup
Not cleared for foreign trade, despite claiming to export	The public habilitação lookup does not show the company as habilitado to operate in foreign trade	Portal Único Siscomex
A meat or poultry plant's SIF number is not approved for your country	MAPA's SIGSIF list of establishments cleared to export "por País" does not contain that SIF for your destination	MAPA / SIGSIF
Tax standing is bad, or the seller will not show it	A Certidão Positiva (open federal debts), or a flat refusal to produce a Certidão Negativa de Débitos, is a sign of a supplier under strain	Certidão de Regularidade Fiscal

The single strongest of these for a buyer of Brazilian goods is the mismatch between a claimed export history and an empty habilitação record. A company that has genuinely exported for years is in the foreign-trade register. One that is not in it, while telling you it ships container loads every month, has a gap between its story and the state's records that it cannot easily explain.

The mechanics of each register, what fields the CNPJ card shows, how the habilitação lookup reads, and the move of the old RADAR check to Portal Único from 31 August 2026, are set out on CNPJ and public registers. The point here is the reading, not the clicking: each register converts one of the seller's claims into a fact you can confirm or fail.

Red flags in the documents and certificates

Documents are the other surface a fraud lives on, and two habits matter for recognition.

A certificate can be forged, and an inspection certificate is a favourite because payment is often released against it. The major issuers, SGS, Bureau Veritas, Cotecna and Intertek, run free tools that confirm whether a certificate number really exists in their database. That check, and the tools for it, sit on the protecting an advance payment page. What matters for reading a fraud is the limit of it: a verification tool confirms that the paper is genuine, never that the shipment behind it is. A real certificate can describe a cargo that never sailed. Confirming the goods themselves is a separate step, which is what pre-shipment inspection is for.

The second habit is the one above, applied to paperwork generally. Any document that cites an ICC rule number is worth a ten-second check against UCP 600. Fabricated document sets tend to carry invented rule citations, and a single false one taints the rest.

Business email compromise, in one line

By money lost, one of the largest documented categories on the FBI IC3 figures is not the fake sugar offer. It is the redirected wire: a genuine supplier whose email has been compromised, followed by a message asking that payment go to a new account. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported 55.5 billion dollars in claimed losses across 305,033 incidents between October 2013 and December 2023. There is no equivalent Brazilian warning aimed at export trade, so that figure is IC3's, not a Brazilian authority's.

This belongs in a scams page for scale, but it is not a recognition problem in the same sense as the offers above, because the sender often looks entirely real. It is a verification-of-instructions problem, and the defence, confirming any change of bank details through a channel other than the email that asked, is set out in full on protecting an advance payment.

How to tell a real exporter from a paper one

Pulling recognition and verification together, this is the sequence that separates a company that can ship from one that only appears to.

Read the offer first. A price well below the market, and contract language built around an "Advance Payment Bank Guarantee", "Proof of Funds", "Bank Comfort" or an NCND letter as a precondition, is the documented commodity fraud pattern. Sugar offers carry it most often.

Run the rules test. Hold any cited rule number against UCP 600. A reference to "UCP 700" or "ICC 400/500/600 rules" is a fraud marker the ICC has named, not a technicality.

Check the company against the registers. Confirm the CNPJ exists and reads ATIVA, that the registered name matches the invoice, that the activity codes fit the goods, and that the company shows as cleared for foreign trade in the Portal Único habilitação lookup. A long claimed history with an empty register is the mismatch to act on.

Check the plant, for meat and poultry. Confirm the SIF number on the paperwork is on MAPA's list of establishments approved to export to your specific destination, not approved in general.

Test the seller's willingness to be checked. A real exporter can produce a Certidão Negativa de Débitos and does not treat a request for its CNPJ, its habilitação status or an independent inspection as an insult. Resistance to being verified is itself a signal.

None of this is legal or financial advice, and passing every check does not make a deal safe. It moves a counterparty from unknown to looked-at. A wider walk through exporter checks sits on verifying a Brazilian exporter, and the branch as a whole starts at sourcing from Brazil. Confirm the current state of each register and rule before you rely on it.

Sources

• Commodity fraud pattern and contract red flags: ICC Commercial Crime Services, "CCS uncovers commodity frauds", published 22 November 2006, https://iccwbo.org/media-wall/news-speeches/ccs-uncovers-commodity-frauds. Primary source. The publication date is old; the pattern, including sugar, iron ore and scrap among the named goods, and the below-market price and "Advance Payment Bank Guarantee", "Bank Comfort", "Proof of Funds" and NCND markers, is quoted from it.
• Non-existent ICC rules as a fraud marker: ICC, "Traders warned about non-existent ICC instruments quoted on internet", published 1 April 2005, https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/news/traders-warned-about-non-existent-icc-instruments-quoted-on-internet/. Primary source. The current documentary credit rules are UCP 600, in force since 1 July 2007.
• There is no confirmed official warning, from the ICC or from Brazilian authorities, about a specific "ICUMSA 45 scam" or an "advance payment for inspection" scheme. Only the general commodity fraud pattern above is documented. Material presenting a Brazil-specific sugar-scam alert as official is commercial, not from a government or the ICC.
• Business email compromise scale: IC3/FBI public service announcement PSA240911, "Business Email Compromise: The $55 Billion Scam", 11 September 2024, https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2024/PSA240911. Primary source, a US government body. No equivalent Brazilian warning for export trade was found; the figures are IC3's and are not attributed to a Brazilian authority. BEC is covered in full on the protecting an advance payment page.
• Company legitimacy red flags and the registers behind them: Receita Federal CNPJ status (Comprovante de Inscrição e de Situação Cadastral), the five situação cadastral values, Portal Único Siscomex habilitação, MAPA/SIGSIF establishments cleared to export by country, and the Certidão de Regularidade Fiscal. Drawn from the project's verification research, cross-checked against gov.br sources; the register mechanics and their access conditions are set out on the CNPJ and public registers page. The move of the RADAR foreign-trade check to Portal Único takes effect 31 August 2026, with the old page switched off 30 September 2026.

Facts on this page were checked on 8 September 2026. Registers, rules and the systems that host them change; confirm the current position before relying on any date or link above.