At the World Port Center, a cooperation agreement was signed between the Port of Rotterdam Authority and VOTOB (Association of Dutch Tank Storage Companies) to continue and expand a task force aimed at combating the fraud scheme known as storage spoofing.
With this step, both parties send a clear signal to international fraudsters who target the port of Rotterdam and other seaports with this persistent form of deception. TCT The Commodity Traders and the Police (Seaport Police District, including the Digital Expertise team) are also part of the task force.
Storage spoofing
Storage spoofing, or tank storage spoofing, is the collective term coined in Rotterdam for all forms of selling non-existent storage capacity and inventories of raw materials and products at terminals, particularly in the port of Rotterdam area. In this form of internet fraud, criminals offer goods via fake websites that impersonate well-known tank storage companies. Victims include, on the one hand, international traders who are misled and lose substantial sums of money to non-existent deals, and on the other hand legitimate companies in the port area whose names and data are misused. In some cases, tank trucks even arrive at terminals to collect products that do not exist.
The annual damage to traders is estimated at at least €10 million, as a lower bound based on insight into amounts actually paid (i.e. only the amounts that are known). In 2025, deals with a total offered value of €2.5 billion were reported to the task force. In addition, there is significant damage for companies whose names and data are misused, as well as reputational damage to the port(s) as a whole.
“Several of our members have been dealing with this for years,” says Willem-Henk Streekstra, Director of VOTOB. “With this cooperation, we are providing professional support to reduce storage spoofing. It is good to address this issue so actively together with the Port Authority and other partners. Together we can do more than each of us individually. It remains extremely frustrating when your company name is misused and people lose large amounts of money.”
History and task force
The first examples of this type of fraud date back some 15 years. About ten years ago, the number of incidents began to increase, leading to the establishment of a task force in 2017, at the time under the banner of Ferm Rotterdam (now Ferm Seaports). Among other things, an awareness campaign was launched, laying the foundation for the current task force.
Through interviews, background articles and tools on the website, a blacklist of unreliable websites and a whitelist of websites where entrepreneurs can safely do business, the fight against ‘storage spoofers’ was taken up. The blacklist of fraudulent websites now contains more than 1,250 domains and is continuously expanded.
The task forces – consisting of Ferm, the Port of Rotterdam Authority, the Seaport Police and several VOTOB members – entered a cooperation with the Dutch Foundation for Internet Domain Registration (SIDN) in 2020 and with The Commodity Traders (TCT) in 2024. SIDN-supports the offline takedown of fraudulent websites with a .nl domain. TCT supports the task force with due diligence to assess the reliability of offered deals and documents and to determine which websites should be added to the blacklist. Fraud cases are prevented on a daily basis.
New cooperation
Within Ferm, the task force previously operated via the domain ferm-rotterdam.nl/storage-spoofing, and has now moved to www.storagespoofing.nl, a platform of the Port of Rotterdam Authority, VOTOB, TCT and the Seaport Police. From VOTOB, several terminals in the port of Rotterdam also participate in the task force.
“Ferm Seaports is a national platform for the cyber resilience and robustness of seaports of national importance,” says Marijn van Schoote, Director of Ferm Seaports. “Storage spoofing is a form of digitalised crime that affects the economy and the integrity of ports, as well as the people who work there. It is therefore positive that this new cooperation ensures continued attention to combating this type of fraud. We are very pleased that the Port of Rotterdam Authority and VOTOB recognise this urgency.”
The primary tools used by fraudsters are fake websites, emails and other forms of digital contact based on trust and forged documents. Much information about (spoofed) companies is publicly available (via websites, chambers of commerce, Google Maps, etc.), and content can easily be copied. This has led to a proliferation of unreliable websites that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from legitimate ones. The task force is actively committed to identifying these websites, blacklisting them and having them taken offline.
Source: Port of Rotterdam
