Have you ever gone through a drive thru restaurant, ordered your food, paid for your order and then drove away only to find out they gave you regular coke instead of diet? Now your lunch just isn’t the same. But you realize that it was an honest mistake. So will you return to that drive thru? Sure, I would. We all make mistakes.

Now what if you knew of a scheme going on, that was intended to cause people like me and you to be wrongfully deceived and possibly cause a significant financial loss to our family or business. Could you even imagine putting yourself or your company in a position like that?

Well don’t be surprised to find out that in the days in which we live there are people out there that will not think twice about doing just that! It is our goal as a company to even the playing field to help all of us defend ourselves against this type of fraudulent behavior.

“Fake Converters” are emerging from countries like China, Hungary, Croatia and Turkey. Yes there are companies that have created a business of manufacturing Fake Converters so that brokers can funnel them into the U.S. scrap market and other countries in hopes of deceiving scrap converter buyers – Buyer beware! Is this really so unethical? If you went to a jewelry store to buy a diamond and the clerk knowingly sold you a Cubic Zirconium at the cost of a diamond – would you blame yourself for the error or the jeweler? How would you feel if you were duped in such a fashion?

Let’s stand up to these dishonest scams and help clean up an industry that we should all be proud to be a part of. All of us should be aware of these ‘Malicious Deceitful Schemes’ and we encourage you to provide any information possible if you experience or become aware of such schemes. Above are some pictures of a few Fake Converters showing up in the market. As you can see, these guys have gone to great lengths to replicate the original converter. They have even gone so far as to dip the ends of the bricks just enough so when X-rayed they appear to be plated. You may not have the ability to spot a fake diamond but with all of us working together we look forward to reducing the impact fake converters have in our industry.

Look for the following:

(1) Converter brick appears unused, clean no carbon residue. Most used scrap converters have carbon buildup, black smog that leaves your hands dirty after handling.

(2) The converter shell appears new, there’s an obvious difference between one that has been on a car for some time and a brand new one that has no wear. Just like a pair of shoes after wearing them they develop scratches, marks, etc.

(3) Any time there is a large volume of the same converter it should be a huge red flag, especially when dealing with late model import from overseas, BMW, Mercedes, etc.