Quick Answer: The Facebook Marketplace container scam works the same way every time. A listing appears cheaper than legitimate sellers, the “company” demands wire transfer or e-transfer up front, and the container never arrives. Buyers usually call Van Blanc two weeks later. The single best protection is paying nothing until you see the bin. Tell us your delivery address and we will quote real costs, no anchored numbers, just honest pricing. Real Brantford yards, real reviews (4.9 / 124+), real 1-3 day delivery. Family-operated since 1995.
In This Guide
- The call we take every week
- What Does the Container Scam Look Like on Facebook Marketplace?
- Why Facebook Marketplace is the scammer’s favourite platform
- The two-week pattern: when the call-back comes
- The dollar math behind a discount
- How CBC News and the BBB documented this scam
- How to step out of the trap before you wire
- Cash on delivery: why scammers refuse it
- If you’ve already sent the money
- Why people drive to our Brantford yard before they pay
- FAQs
Reading time: 13 minutes
The call we take every week
It is the same phone call. Maybe twice a week, sometimes more. Someone in Brampton or Belleville or Sault Ste. Marie has found a 20ft shipping container on Facebook Marketplace at a price that is roughly below what any real Ontario supplier would post. The seller seems professional. The photos are clean. There is even an invoice with a logo and an address.
The buyer calls Van Blanc to ask whether the listing makes sense. Sometimes we catch them in time. More often, they have already sent the money, the container has not arrived, the seller has stopped responding, and they are looking at us asking what happened.
Paul LeBlanc, owner of Van Blanc since 1995: “Many people call us saying they can get a bin less on Facebook. Two weeks later they call back saying they got scammed. Don’t fall for it. The bin that is cheaper is the bin that never arrives. We have taken this call for thirty years.”
This article exists because the pattern is now industrial. It is not one bad actor on Facebook. It is an organised industry of fraudsters running the same playbook across Canada, getting smarter about logos and invoices, and pulling money out of Canadian buyers every single week. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and Better Business Bureau have both tracked it. CBC News reported a Toronto victim and a Hamilton buyer who each lost thousands to fraudulent listings inside a single month.
The good news is that the pattern is consistent enough that you can spot it before you wire a dollar. The hard part is recognising it while it is happening to you, because by the time the listing has your attention, it is already designed to look real. The rest of this guide walks through the anatomy of the scam from a yard that has watched it for three decades.
What Does the Container Scam Look Like on Facebook Marketplace?
The Facebook Marketplace shipping container scam is not a random misspelled post. It is a small studio of details engineered to look exactly like a legitimate Ontario container supplier. Here is what one looks like by the time it reaches the buyer.
Step one: the listing
A 20ft or 40ft container appears on Facebook Marketplace. The photo is clean, often a stock industry photo or one stolen directly from a real supplier’s website. The headline reads something like “20ft Sea Can – Cargo Worthy – Delivery Available” and the price is consistently below what the rest of the Ontario market is charging. Whatever the going rate is for a delivered Cargo Worthy 20ft, this listing will sit noticeably under it. If a one-trip 40ft High Cube normally commands a premium, this listing will undercut that too.
The price difference is not random. It is calibrated. The scammer wants to be cheap enough that you start to think you have found a bargain, but not so cheap that it triggers the “too good to be true” alarm.
Step two: the contact
You message the seller. They reply quickly and professionally. The conversation moves off Facebook within a few exchanges, usually to an email address or a SMS number. The seller introduces themselves with a name and a company. The company name may be borrowed directly from a real Ontario container business. Conterm, BigSteelBox, Storstac, and many smaller suppliers have all reported their names being used by fraudsters.
Step three: the invoice
An invoice arrives. It has a logo, a Canadian business address, sometimes a real-looking HST number, payment terms, and a delivery date. The address may correspond to a real container yard on Google Maps. The phone number on the invoice may even ring through to a voicemail with a professional greeting. Everything about the document looks like every legitimate Canadian B2B invoice you have ever seen.
Step four: the payment request
This is where the scam separates from the legitimate purchase. The seller asks for payment up front, before delivery. Sometimes the full amount, sometimes a 50% deposit. The payment method is always one of three:
- Wire transfer, often to an account that turns out to be overseas
- Interac e-transfer, which Canadian financial institutions cannot easily reverse
- Cryptocurrency, which is irreversible by design
A legitimate Ontario container supplier may take a deposit by credit card or accept payment by cheque, but the standard in this industry, including at Van Blanc, is cash on delivery. The fraudster cannot offer cash on delivery because there is no container and no delivery driver.
Step five: the silence
The money clears. The delivery date passes. The seller stops responding. The phone number goes to voicemail or is disconnected. The email bounces. The Facebook listing has either disappeared or been edited to remove your conversation history.
Most buyers wait three or four days before they fully accept what has happened. Then they spend another week trying to reach the seller, hoping the silence is a logistics problem. Around day ten or eleven, they start phoning legitimate Ontario suppliers to ask whether the company name on their invoice is the real one. Around day fourteen, they call us.
Why Facebook Marketplace is the scammer’s favourite platform
Facebook Marketplace was not designed for B2B equipment sales worth thousands of dollars. It was designed for someone selling a couch to their neighbour. That design choice is what makes it perfect for container fraud.
What makes Facebook Marketplace structurally weak against this scam
Listings have no verified seller history outside of personal Facebook profile age. Profiles can be created in minutes using stolen photos. Facebook does not verify that the listing’s location, the seller’s account location, and the alleged business address match. Buyer-protection programs are designed around items that ship through Facebook’s checkout system, which container sales never use. By the time you have moved the conversation to email and sent a wire transfer, Facebook is no longer part of the transaction at all.
Kijiji has the same structural problem and is hit just as hard. CBC News reported in their original 2021 investigation that fraudsters were running container listings across both platforms simultaneously. The Better Business Bureau named the pattern the “Sea Can Scam” in their public Scam Tracker alert in March 2022, and that alert was still being updated as recently as February 2025 because the scam keeps recurring with new spelling tricks (think bigstealbox.com instead of bigsteelbox.com) and new fake business addresses.
What makes the scam durable is that it costs almost nothing to run. A scammer needs a Facebook account, a stolen logo, a fake invoice template, and a bank account that can receive a wire transfer. Real Ontario container yards spend thirty years building a yard, a fleet, relationships with port-side wholesalers, drivers, and a customer base. The scammer spends an afternoon. The economics of the scam are why it keeps coming back.
The two-week pattern: when the call-back comes
If you take only one thing from this article, take this: the call-back comes at two weeks. That is the consistent timeline. We have seen it for so long it is almost predictable to the day.
- Days one to three: the buyer has sent the money, has a promised delivery date, and is calm. The seller is still occasionally responsive.
- Days four to seven: the promised delivery date has passed. The seller’s responses become vague. “Logistics delay.” “Trucking partner issue.” “Customs hold.” The buyer feels the first uncertainty but rationalises it.
- Days eight to eleven: communication stops entirely. The buyer starts trying alternative channels. Voicemail. Email. Sometimes a different number.
- Days twelve to fourteen: the buyer accepts what has happened. They start calling real Ontario suppliers to verify whether the company on the invoice is legitimate. This is when our phone rings.
The call almost always starts the same way: “I want to ask if you know a company called [name]. I bought a container from them and it has not arrived.” Sometimes the company name is one we have never heard. Sometimes the company name is ours, used by a fraudster with a slightly different email address.
Why we know the two-week pattern
Van Blanc has operated out of Brantford since 1995. Over thirty years we have taken these call-backs from buyers across Ontario, from the GTA down to Niagara, up through Muskoka and Sudbury, and east to Kingston and Brockville. Paul keeps a mental record of how the calls cluster. They come in waves, usually after a scammer has been running listings for a few weeks. The wave hits, the buyers call back, and then the wave passes for a month or two before a new scammer picks up the same playbook.
The dollar math behind a discount
The most useful question you can ask before any container purchase is the simplest one. How is this seller so much cheaper than every other Ontario supplier? The answer is almost always one of three things, and only one of them is fraud.
| Why might this listing be cheaper? | What it really means |
|---|---|
| Lower-grade container being sold as a higher grade | The seller is calling a Wind & Watertight container “Cargo Worthy” or an As-Is container “WWT.” You are paying less but getting less. Legal but not honest. |
| Delivery is excluded and undisclosed | The price looks like the all-in number but does not include delivery, tilt service, or fuel. A delivery quote arrives after you agree. |
| The container does not exist | The most common reason for a price that is below the market. There is no bin. The discount exists to lure the deposit. |
The economics of the real container industry are tight. Wholesale prices, port handling, trucking, and yard storage costs are well known across the supply chain. No legitimate Ontario yard is buying containers for a thousand dollars less than the rest of the industry. If a listing is well below market, it is either misrepresenting the grade, hiding a delivery fee, or selling a container that does not exist.
How CBC News and the BBB documented this scam
This is not a Van Blanc anecdote. It is a documented pattern that Canadian newsrooms and consumer protection agencies have been tracking for years.
CBC News ran an investigation reporting that fraudsters were taking in thousands of dollars per day in coordinated the broader container-scam playbook. Two named victims in the reporting illustrate the financial damage. A buyer in Toronto lost a substantial sum to a single fraudulent transaction. A buyer in Hamilton was hit in the same month. Both transactions involved company information lifted from real Canadian container businesses.
The Better Business Bureau formalised the pattern in their public Scam Alert with the phrase “Sea Can Scam.” Their alert details the same playbook this article describes: a professional-looking website or listing, a real-business address used as cover, a demand for prepayment, and post-purchase silence. The BBB alert was first published in March 2022 and was still being updated as recently as February 2025, which tells you everything about how persistent the scam is.
Container industry associations and individual Canadian suppliers have published their own warnings as the impersonation has reached them. Conterm, a Montreal-based container company, publishes a recurring fraud alert because their company name is used by Facebook Marketplace fraudsters. ATS Containers, Cantrans, Sigma Container, and others have written similar pieces. Storstac, BigSteelBox, Royal Wolf, and Van Blanc have all had buyers call asking whether listings under our names are legitimate. They almost never are.
How to step out of the trap before you wire
There is a verification routine that, if you run it before you send any money, will catch nearly every Facebook Marketplace container scam. We tell every caller who phones us with a “found a listing” question to do these steps in order.
Five-step verification checklist before you pay
- Call the company on a phone number you found independently. Do not call the number on the listing or invoice. Search Google for the company name, find their real website, and use the phone number listed there. If the listing claims to be Van Blanc, call 519-754-6844 (a number that has been ours since the 1990s). If the buyer on the other end of the listing matches the buyer on the real phone line, it is real. If they do not, you have a fraudster.
- Look at the address on Google Street View. A real Ontario container yard has containers in it. If the address shows a residential lot, an empty parking lot, or a yard that belongs to a completely different industry, the listing is fraudulent. Scammers love using addresses that look legitimate at street level but have nothing to do with their alleged business.
- Search the business name on the Government of Canada’s Federal Corporation Search and the Ontario Business Registry. A real Ontario incorporated company will appear. A fraudulent name will not, or it will surface as a registered entity under a completely different address than the listing claims.
- Demand cash on delivery, or at minimum a credit card payment. Cash on delivery means the driver does not unload the container until you have inspected it and handed over payment. Credit card gives you chargeback rights. Wire transfer, e-transfer, and cryptocurrency give you nothing. If the seller refuses cash on delivery and refuses credit card, walk away. This is the single highest-value test in the verification routine.
- Visit the yard in person if you can. Most Ontario buyers are within a two-hour drive of a legitimate Ontario container yard. If a seller refuses an in-person visit, the listing is almost certainly fraudulent. A real yard has real containers and is happy to walk you through them. Our address is 90 Morton Avenue East in Brantford, and Paul or his son Christian will walk a bin with you before you pay anything.
Any one of those five steps will catch a Facebook Marketplace fraudster. Two of them together is overwhelming evidence. Three of them is a guarantee. The reason scams keep working is that buyers, in the moment of finding what they think is a deal, do not run the routine. They send the money first and verify after, and verification after is too late.
Cash on delivery: why scammers refuse it
Cash on delivery is the structural difference between a legitimate Ontario container yard and a Facebook Marketplace fraudster. The reason is simple. To offer cash on delivery, the seller must actually have a container, an actual driver, and an actual address you can name in advance. Scammers have none of those things.
This is also why cash on delivery has become the trust signal that real Ontario buyers ask for. We have customers who chose Van Blanc specifically because they could pay the driver on arrival rather than wire money to a stranger first. One review on our homepage from Scott J. reads, “Don’t waste your time with Facebook. Just call Van Blanc.” Another from Michael L. references the COD model directly as part of why he came back to buy from us a second time, seven years after the first.
The COD test, in one sentence
Ask the seller: “Can I pay you in person when the truck arrives?” If the answer is yes and the seller can provide a delivery date and a driver name, the operation is real. If the answer is “we require payment first,” the operation may still be legitimate, but the Facebook Marketplace listings that lead to scams universally fail this test.
This is not a Van Blanc-only practice. Most established Ontario container yards will offer some version of pay-on-delivery, either fully or with a small deposit refundable on arrival. National franchises often require prepayment, which is a business model decision, not a scam, but it is worth knowing the difference between a national company asking for a credit card prepayment and a Facebook listing asking for a wire transfer.
If you’ve already sent the money
If you have already wired money and the container has not arrived, time matters. The recovery options narrow quickly after the first 48 to 72 hours.
What to do in the first 72 hours after a suspected container scam
- Contact your bank or e-transfer provider immediately. If the e-transfer has not been claimed yet, your bank may be able to cancel it. If a wire transfer is still in process, an urgent call to your bank’s fraud line may catch it before it settles. Once the money clears the recipient account, recovery becomes extremely difficult.
- Report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Call 1-888-495-8501 or report online at antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca. The CAFC aggregates these reports and shares intelligence with the RCMP and provincial police. Your report contributes to the national pattern picture, even if it does not recover your money.
- Report to your local police service. File a police report so you have an official case number. Many banks require this for any fraud claim. The OPP, Toronto Police, Hamilton Police, and other Ontario services all accept online fraud reports.
- Report to the BBB Scam Tracker. This adds your case to the public Sea Can Scam pattern, which has helped track repeat fraudsters across provinces. bbb.org/scamtracker
- Report the Facebook Marketplace listing. Even after the scam, reporting the listing to Facebook may help prevent the next victim. Use the report function on the listing itself, not just the seller profile.
- Save every piece of correspondence. Screenshots of the listing, the messages, the invoice, the bank confirmation, the email exchanges. Banks and police will ask for this.
The painful truth is that recovery from these scams is rare. The reporting matters anyway, both for the small chance of bank-side reversal in the first day or two, and for the pattern picture that may catch the scammer before they hit the next buyer.
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Tell us the size and your postal code and we’ll send back an honest, all-in number, container, delivery, and placement, usually within 1-3 days. No pressure, no mystery fees.
Family-run in Brantford since 1995 · 200+ containers in stock · 4.9★ across 124+ Google reviews · every box graded by a person, walk it before it lands.
Why people drive to our Brantford yard before they pay
A meaningful share of our customers drive to Brantford from Sault Ste. Marie, from Ottawa, from Sudbury, from Windsor, to walk our yard before they buy. They are not making the trip because Brantford is the most convenient place in Ontario. They are making it because once you have watched a Facebook Marketplace scam wave roll through your region, walking the yard becomes a non-negotiable.
We have four yards in the Brantford area, a real address on Morton Avenue East, real containers in real rows, and a real owner who has been running this business since 1995. Paul has 19 years specifically in the container industry and 40 years in Asian trade before that. His son Christian works the yard with him now, has been around the trade since he was 15 travelling to Asia with his father, and walks bins with buyers most days of the week.
That is not a sales pitch. It is the structural reason a Facebook Marketplace fraudster cannot do what we do. They can fake an invoice. They cannot fake a yard, a driver, four decades of family operating experience, and 124+ Google reviews accumulated over years of actually delivering containers across Ontario in 1-3 days from our four Brantford yards.
Paul on the worth-the-drive principle: “Buyers from Kingston, Ottawa, Sudbury, they all come down to walk the bins. They could find someone closer. But once you have been burned on Facebook, or once your neighbour has, the drive to Brantford becomes worth it. We are the real yard. That is what we sell.”
Every quote we give comes with a real lead time, not a hopeful one. Every container is one you can see in person before you pay. That is the family business position. Facebook Marketplace fraudsters cannot replicate any part of it, which is why they keep losing the buyers who run the verification routine before they wire.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do shipping container scams on Facebook Marketplace work?
A scammer posts a 20ft or 40ft container at a price noticeably below the Ontario market, contacts the buyer with a stolen company name and a professional-looking invoice, demands wire transfer or e-transfer payment in advance, and then disappears once the money clears. The container never existed. The CBC reported individual victims losing anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands in a single month.
How much money is lost to shipping container scams in Canada?
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre tracks shipping container fraud as part of broader merchandise scam reporting. Individual victims commonly lose several thousand dollars per transaction for a single container, with reported losses climbing into the tens of thousands for multi-container orders. The pattern has been documented since at least 2021 and remains active through 2026 across both Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji.
Is it ever safe to buy a shipping container on Facebook Marketplace?
It is possible to find legitimate local sellers offloading a single container on Facebook Marketplace. The safety test is the same as for any container purchase. Visit the address in person, confirm the container exists, refuse to pay until delivery, and verify the seller through an independent phone number. If the seller refuses an in-person visit or refuses payment on delivery, the listing is not safe regardless of how legitimate it looks online.
Why does the scammer always ask for wire transfer or e-transfer?
Wire transfers and Interac e-transfers are difficult or impossible for Canadian financial institutions to reverse once they clear. Credit cards offer chargeback rights that protect the buyer for up to 60 to 120 days. Cash on delivery means the seller must actually deliver to get paid. Scammers cannot use credit cards or accept cash on delivery, which is why they push wire and e-transfer as the only options.
What should I do if I think I have been scammed buying a shipping container?
Contact your bank’s fraud line immediately to attempt to reverse the transaction, then report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501, file a police report with your local service, log the case on the BBB Scam Tracker, and save all correspondence including the listing, messages, and invoice. Reversal is rare after 48 to 72 hours but the reporting contributes to tracking the fraudsters.
Has Van Blanc’s name ever been used by Facebook Marketplace scammers?
Yes. Like every established Ontario container supplier, we have had buyers call asking whether listings under our name are legitimate. They almost never are. If you see a listing claiming to be Van Blanc, verify by calling 519-754-6844 directly. Our real address is 90 Morton Avenue East, Brantford. If a listing shows a different address or different phone number under our name, it is fraudulent.
Sources
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2021). ‘I don’t think this is going to stop’: More companies, consumers caught in shipping container scam. CBC News. cbc.ca
- Better Business Bureau. (2022, updated 2025). BBB Scam Alert: In the market for a shipping container? Watch out for this con. BBB Scam Tracker. bbb.org
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. (2026). Reporting fraud and scams. Government of Canada. antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca
- Conterm Inc. (2024). Fraud Alert: Shipping Containers for Sale on Facebook Marketplace. conterm.ca
- International Organization for Standardization. (2022). ISO 6346:2022 Freight containers: Coding, identification and marking. iso.org
Reach Van Blanc in Brantford
We have been supplying shipping containers across Ontario since 1995. Our warehouse is at 90 Morton Avenue East in Brantford, and we deliver across the province in 1-3 days from our four Brantford yards on a cash-on-delivery basis. No surprise fees, no chase-the-paperwork.
Van Blanc Ent. Inc. 90 Morton Ave E Unit 1B, Brantford, ON N3R 7J7. 519-754-6844
If you have found a Facebook Marketplace listing that worries you, call us before you wire anything. We will tell you straight whether the price, the address, and the company name pass the verification routine. The call is free. The two-week phone call we would otherwise get is the expensive one.