Heads up to business owners, sales teams, and procurement departments: the Net 30 Purchase Order/Request for Quote (RFQ) scam is making a comeback.

Years ago, I used to see this scam email style often, but I haven’t seen it in years, and my research shows it’s making a comeback. The screenshot is of one that was just submitted via our website contact form.

While it frequently targets the IT sector with high-end tech (like the high-value processors shown in the screenshot), scammers are rapidly expanding across all industries. Whether you sell construction materials, medical supplies, laboratory equipment, specialised tools, or wholesale goods, if your inventory is valuable and easy to flip on the secondary market, your business is a target for these fake bulk orders.

The playbook is always identical. A scammer (or a bot filling out your website’s contact form) will impersonate a real buyer from a legitimate organisation, like a university, hospital, or major corporation, often using a lookalike email domain. They place a large, unsolicited order and casually slip in “Our payment terms are Net 30” to bypass immediate payment. If you ship the goods on credit, they vanish, the real organisation has no record of the order, and you are left with a devastating financial loss.

Always independently verify new bulk inquiries, scrutinise the sender’s actual email domain, and never grant credit terms without a rigorous, verified background check.