The International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA) recently issued a warning to its members regarding the cloning of paper bills of lading by fraudsters. In these latest incidents, according to FIATA sources, master bills of lading are being cloned by fraudsters posing as shippers, who in turn present the documents to the consignee’s bank for payment. The copycat documents are indistinguishable from the paper originals since they contain valid information and appear to be issued by recognized global carriers, making it even harder for banks to verify their authenticity or lack thereof. The warning, issued in FIATA’s December 2014 E-flash, further highlights the major fraud risks related to paper bills of lading and the relative ease with which fraudsters can modify or duplicate these crucial documents, often extracting large sums from unassuming parties in the supply chain. As opposed to their paper counterparts, electronic bills of lading offer a substantially safer alternative, since parties in the chain are required to authenticate their identity via both their user credentials and a one-off security token code, in addition to the fact that documents are easily traceable through the chain, and the creation & distribution of eDocs is backed by a secure IT infrastructure including managed firewalls, secure VPN, network and host based intrusion detection, SSL encryption/decryption and more.

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