business being scammed or real order??

I run a one-man business selling boards for motion control applications, largely related to LinuxCNC.

I have been contacted by email by a guy calling himself "sultan Mohammed", claiming to be from Dubai, and wanting to order 30 boards. As far as I can tell, he has never seen this board, so it is a little strange to just jump right in with an order of 30 units.
His email is through gmail, so they conceal his IP, so I don't have much to go on. He did give an address in Dubai, and the Al Amir trading Company he lists does seem to exist. He wants to pay by wire transfer, which is common for international B2B orders.
He did say something about having the order picked up in the US, which really set my alarm bells ringing. I've heard of that scam before.

Anyway, I don't usually keep a huge inventory of these boards on hand, and don't want to make up 30 boards and then have the sale collapse when he wants to pick up the boards now and pay later.

Does anybody have any suggestions on this? Any ideas how to check this guy out and see if there are similar scams by somebody by the same name? (There seem to be thousands of Sultan Mohammeds in the middle east.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. (Or suggestions where to ask for info.)

Jon

It does seem suspicious, can you ask him a bit about his end use or get some information about his customer?

John,

Best is only accept bank payment.
I do that too. From Russia to Jakarta. Al my customer's pay by bank account, no exeption's and
alway's let them pay first. Don't let the sultan fool you.

Always always payment upfront!

There is enough new manufacturing development in Dubai to make this plausible -- either as legit or a scam, depending. A friend of mine is a consulting industrial engineer, and he has spent a lot of time over there getting automation systems in place. It's a high priority for the kingdom, since they expect to run out of oil eventually. They are rapidly implementing alternative income sources, but they aren't completely sophisticated at it yet.

I was surprised to see my son's snowboard labeled "Made in Dubai", but the company that makes them has a lot capacity in the UAE for precision carbon fiber layup and they are pushing the edge in innovation is several areas. If you can get payment up front, you could very well make a good score. There are legit customers for those kinds of products in that country for sure.

It looks like a scam for me. I don't want to be categoric here, because of my paranoia on those scam things, but related to what you have written above, it looks like a scammer for me. I remember having problems like that until I’ve hired a lawyer. From that moment, all my business life has become simply amazing. I don’t have to worry about a lot of things because my lawyer is worried about them already. The only thing I must do, sadly, is to pay big money. Nevertheless, if you have a small company, you can seek for help here legaloutsourcingservices.co.uk . For a smaller price, you will get assistance and avoid all kind of misery on the internet and besides it!

Personally, I would assume its a real order. There are much bigger scam targets than Pico Systems. Quote it up on a proper quote form (I use my accounting package for this).
Your terms will be Ex Works, payment in advance and you will include your bank details/ SWIFT code etc and delivery time frame.
Do not accept credit cards or Paypal.

Once he pays, you start work.

If he really is a trading company I would expect he would have accounts with FedEx and or DHL or similar so for him to collect would not be out of the ordinary.

I run a small one man band Eccommerce operation out of Australia and I have shipped into Dubai, Qatar and Taiwan where the customer has arranged the collection. I also have a freight forwarder so if I really wanted to obtain 30 of your boards ex US, I could arrange the pickup too...