SA ghost line – the plot thickens!

The SA ghost line has once more promised to set sail (FTW September 19, 2008) – again with a supposed 60 000-metric tonnes of scrap rail lines packed in 2 656 containers. But this time the scrap consignment was apparently sailing from Durban, not Cape Town as in the first ghost line scam. As opposed to the first incident – where an Italian company was conned into believing that the shipment was due to be carried on an MISC ship to its European destination – this time a South Korean company had made an offer for the Durban-based scrap consignment and been told it was being shipped in containers to the port of Pusan on a Unicorn Shipping vessel. And, in this latest case, the ghost line, again suspected to be the non-existent South African Line (SAL), had created a false web page address www. unicornshippingline.com – completely lifting the original Unicorn Shipping web-site, but with a false tracking link, and a fictitious Unicorn Shipping account site for the shipment. But FTW’s sleuthing in our last investigation had alerted the entire Grindrod group (of which Unicorn Shipping is a subsidiary), and Tim McClure, MD of Grindrod bulk shipping subsidiary, Island View Shipping (IVS), forwarded the fictitious web-site and account to FTW. At the same time, the South Korean buyer of the scrap was not so easily fooled as the previous Italian buyer – which had pre-paid the freight cost, suspected to be a multimillionrand sum. An executive of the South Korean company got suspicious about the supposed choice of Unicorn Shipping as the carrier – noting that the line only has bulk and tanker vessels, and has no container vessels going to Pusan. His immediate direct contact with a senior Unicorn Shipping executive had finally confirmed the scam, and the company did not pay any freight up-front for the completely non-existent 60 000-mt scrap consignment – which, according to the fictitious shipping account, had been stopped by the SA department of transport. But again, at the time of writing, no names or contact numbers or addresses for the person or people behind the cyber-scam are yet available. However, both the Grindrod group and FTW are still investigating the matter – and would appreciate any confidential information from readers about South African Line (SAL), or the fictitious 60 000-mt of scrap rail lines.