Equipment Leasing Rare Scams Unveiled

Axis Capital Funding Group took note of some of the scams that you should be aware of when you apply for equipment leasing. If you think it may be impossible for big companies to pull these schemes off, think again. You may be surprised at their mastery on these things. Great scammers stay behind the shadows of legitimate businesses. Fortunately, fraud is a very rare case in the industry.

Will Teft, an expert in this field, points out two types of fraud used by major equipment financial companies.

Serial Number Fraud is one of the main schemes. This involves receipts and subsequent financial of functional set of serial number for the purpose of financing the same physical item equipment with multiple lessors. This is often used using fabricated set of serial number tags. This kind of fraud is detected by documenting the serial number to the result of physical inspection.

Another kind of scams that Teft had pointed out is the misinterpretation of prices which is more subtle and more difficult to detect. In this situation, the equipment do exists with legitimate serial number. However, in this field, the purchased price of the valuable does not reflect a true market-value of the equipment. This is usually done to an inexperienced lessor without prior knowledge about the equipment to be leased.

Rob Misheloff of Smarter Finance USA also compiled 5 Equipment Leasing Scams and Problems.

The first one is the Evergreen Clause.

Say you leased equipment for 48 months, some companies offer $1 buyout which means you can pay a dollar after the contract and the equipment will be yours. However, some companies have a 90-day clause which requires you to notify them before the date set or they’ll renew the contract for 6 or 12 months. This kind of scams is actually legal in many states.

Advanced Fee Scams on the other hand requires that you pay a large deposit (sometimes even thousands of dollars) before getting you approved for financing. They still keep the money if you don’t get the approval.

Some equipment companies even use tactics which are already considered illegal like changing the contract hoping that you won’t notice. One best reminder is to check and recheck your contracts as detailed as possible. You can keep a copy for yourself and compare later on.

The government has created different anti-fraud agencies all over the states in America to protect citizens from these acts. UK also has their own share of legal aids to approach when such circumstances occur. In Asia, particularly in Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore where there are reports of these anomalies, there is no specific agency fighting against this specific cause so it is easier for scammers to take control.