Every week someone posts the same story in importing communities: friendly supplier, great price, warm video calls — then a personal bank account for the deposit, and silence after the wire.
The pattern is so consistent it's boring. Which means it's checkable. So I built the thing I kept recommending as a bullet list: a Supplier Red-Flag Checker — 12 questions, live score, runs entirely in your browser.
The design decisions that mattered
1. Weighted scoring, not a checklist. Not all flags are equal. The three-name match (business license = PI = bank account) is the single strongest anti-fraud check that costs zero — so it's weighted 18. "Emails from a company domain" is a nice-to-have — weighted 3. A naive checklist treats them the same; importers don't.
2. Three dealbreakers override the total. The names match issue, the personal bank account, and 100%-upfront payment demands each get a DEALBREAKER tag. Fail any one and a red banner appears above the score, saying explicitly: this overrides whatever the number says. Because a supplier can be warm, responsive, video-call-friendly — and still be running the classic deposit grab. Charm is a tactic, not a signal.
3. One question has negative weight. "They push urgency — 'price rises tomorrow', 'another buyer wants your production slot'" subtracts 15 when answered yes. Scarcity theater is a pressure tactic. Real capacity quotes stay valid for days. Every other tool scores what's present; a good one has to score what's offensive.
4. Zero dependencies, zero tracking. One HTML file, vanilla JS, ~200 lines. No framework, no analytics, no cookies. The scoring runs client-side because a sourcing tool that phones home would be ironic — the entire premise is "trust documents, not vibes."
The scoring math
The non-dealbreaker weights sum to a max of 100. Answer yes, gain the weight; answer no, lose it; the urgency question subtracts. Three bands: ≥80 green ("clean on paper — still get the documents"), 50–79 amber ("the failed items are your pre-wire checklist"), <50 red ("this is what deposit-loss scams look like from the outside").
The verdict text is deliberately blunt. Band <50 doesn't say "consider alternatives" — it says walking away costs nothing, wiring costs everything.
Why it's free (and free to embed)
The checker is the interactive version of the VERIFY system in our open-source sourcing toolkit. The business model is the China Sourcing Playbook ($12 launch, 25 templates, the full negotiation system) — the tools are the top of the funnel. Classic free-tier economics, applied to sourcing intelligence.
Which is why it ships with an embed code: one iframe line, put it on your freight-forwarding blog, your e-commerce agency site, your importing newsletter:
<iframe src="https://assassinationss.github.io/checker.html" width="100%" height="950"></iframe>
No attribution wall, no signup for your readers. Every embed is a win for us too — I'd rather have the tool living on twenty niche sites than one.
What's next
Its sibling is a Landed Cost Calculator (FOB + freight + duty + VAT → true per-unit cost). The pair covers the two moments importers actually panic: before wiring ("is this supplier real?") and before listing ("what does this order really cost me?").
If you've been burned by a supplier: which question would have saved you? That list, in the comments, is how the next version gets weighted.
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