Cash-on-Delivery Fraud: How Sellers Can Protect Themselves

Cash on delivery fraud: schemes against the seller and how to protect yourself

Cash on delivery protects the buyer but makes the seller vulnerable: fraudsters have learned to profit from non-redemptions, recipient substitution, fake receipts, and phishing disguised as delivery services. In this article, we analyze five common logistics fraud schemes against online stores and show how order filtering, minimal prepayment, and maintaining a recipient database reduce losses.

How much does a seller's gullibility cost

Online fraud in Ukraine is becoming more precise and costly. According to published data, about 256 thousand fraudulent payment card transactions were recorded in 2025, and although the number of attacks slightly decreased, the amount of losses grew by about a quarter — to 1.4 billion hryvnias. According to a Rakuten Viber survey, 62% of Ukrainians have already encountered cyber fraud or phone scams.

Most publications on this topic are written for buyers. However, in schemes involving delivery and cash on delivery, the seller is increasingly becoming the victim: they lose the goods, pay for two-way delivery, and waste managers' time processing fake requests. Earlier, we discussed fake orders and working with prepayments. Here we will focus specifically on logistics schemes.

Scheme 1. "Specify yourself as the recipient — it's safer"

The "buyer" agrees to full prepayment and asks for only two things: to send them the express waybill (AWB) number and to specify the seller themselves as the recipient of the parcel. The argument sounds convincing: supposedly, no outsider will take the cargo until the money arrives. In reality, knowing the AWB number and the recipient's details, the fraudster receives the parcel themselves or re-registers it. Using this exact scheme, as revealed by Nova Poshta, sellers have lost tens of thousands of hryvnias. The company advises sellers to use cash on delivery, not to agree to change the recipient, and to specify an honest declared value — compensation for a lost cargo depends on it.

Safety rules: the AWB number before payment is confidential information. The recipient must always be the real buyer. The declared value must equal the actual price of the goods.

Scheme 2. Phishing disguised as a delivery service and marketplace

In the summer of 2026, experts from the BRAMA project recorded an active scheme against sellers on OLX: the "buyer" writes immediately after an ad is published, suggests moving to a messenger, states that they have already paid for the goods via "OLX Delivery", and sends a fake screenshot with an order number. The link "to receive funds" leads to a fake page where full card details along with SMS codes are lured out of the seller.

In parallel, fraudsters attack businesses via email: in the fall of 2025, a mass mailing of fake emails about supposed debt to Nova Poshta was recorded. The calculation is simple: an accountant or owner will get scared of their shipments being blocked and will click the link.

Safety rules: real services never ask for card details to receive money. All questions regarding transactions, debts, and payouts should be checked only in the official app or cabinet, which you access independently, without clicking on links from emails and messengers.

Scheme 3. Mass non-redemptions and serial "customers"

Non-redemption is a legal option for the buyer, which is abused. The seller pays for round-trip delivery, the goods travel around the country for two weeks and fall out of sale, and a seasonal item might return already irrelevant. A special case is deliberate attacks: a competitor or offended client places orders without the intention of redeeming them. An illustrative example was described by Rozetka co-founder Vladyslav Chechotkin: a dissatisfied client intentionally ordered goods and did not pick them up, and the marketplace's losses exceeded the disputed amount dozens of times over. This is a large company's case, but the mechanics are the same for any store shipping via cash on delivery.

A typical sign of a serial non-redeemer: the same phone number or branch address appears in orders several times, only the names change. Specialized platforms advise filtering such orders and demanding a minimal prepayment — even a symbolic 50-100 hryvnias screen out most fake requests, as a fraudster is not ready to pay for fun. An additional filter is seller communities where details of dishonest buyers and sellers are published: groups like "Black mark, fraudsters" and "Fraudsters on OLX". Before shipping an expensive order to a new client, it is worth searching for their phone number in such lists.

Scheme 4. Returns with product substitution

A buyer orders an original product via cash on delivery, inspects it at the branch, and refuses it, while a fake or broken analog is returned in the package. In a zone of particular risk are sellers of smartphones and other electronics. If a store does not record serial numbers, proving substitution is almost impossible.

Safety rules: record serial numbers when selling, photograph the contents of expensive shipments before packing, and upon receiving a return, verify the number on the device against the number in the documents.

Scheme 5. Fake payment receipt

The client "confirms" payment with a screenshot or a transfer receipt and pushes for urgency: ship it today, the money is already on the way. In reality, the receipt is a standard photo manipulation. There is only one rule: shipment occurs after funds are actually credited to the account, and no picture overrides this rule. In doubtful cases, the bank confirms or refutes the transaction fact.

Examples from Ukrainian retail

First case: in November 2021, an entrepreneur lost a cargo of nuts worth 180 thousand hryvnias. Fraudsters convinced him to specify himself as the recipient and share the AWB numbers, after which they picked up the parcels. An additional blow: the declared value of each box was understated to 30 hryvnias, so the carrier's compensation covered only a fraction of the losses.

Second case: the Rozetka story involving consumer extremism, mentioned above, shows the scale of the non-redemption problem even for major players. For a small store with a 20-30% margin, a few dozen non-redemptions a month eat up the profit of an entire product line, so order filtering and prepayments for new buyers is math first, and service second.

If you have already been scammed: the fraudster's liability

Fraud is the taking of someone else's property by deception or breach of trust, for which Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine provides penalties ranging from a fine to 12 years in prison, depending on the amount of damages and circumstances. Online schemes are often qualified under Part 4 as fraud through illegal transactions using electronic computing equipment, which means 3 to 8 years. The boundary between administrative and criminal liability is tied to the tax-free minimum and changes every year: in 2026, theft up to 3,328 hryvnias is considered petty; anything above is a criminal offense.

An important nuance for a police report: investigators need to prove that the person already intended not to fulfill obligations at the moment of receiving the goods or money. Therefore, save evidence of intent: correspondence with the "buyer" (especially requests to change the recipient or "payment" screenshots), AWB numbers, bank statements, profile data. The report is submitted to the Cyber Police via cyberpolice.gov.ua or to the nearest police station. Fraudsters bank on the seller waving it off due to the small amount, so every report works against this model.

Where to start

1. Establish shipping rules: the recipient is only the buyer, declared value is real, AWB number is not shared until payment, shipment — after funds are credited. Familiarize every manager with the rules.
2. Enable a minimal prepayment for new clients and for orders above a certain threshold. Leave cash on delivery without limits for verified regular buyers.
3. Start accumulating a recipient database: every order is a client in Torgsoft with a history and notes. In two or three months, the database itself will prompt you who to ship to without prepayment and who to refuse.

Full checklist for protection against logistics fraud

Frequently Asked Questions

Logistics fraud exploits haste and trust. A seller who works by the rules (real recipient, honest declared value, prepayment for new clients, recipient database with history) stops being an easy target: it is easier for a fraudster to find another victim than to bypass the accounting system. Read more about the broader context of business protection in the article about store information security.