Advance payment against payment on delivery: the only real protection

Almost every fraud in this market is a fraud about timing rather than about outcomes. The product is the advance, and the service is whatever keeps the client waiting long enough. Structuring payment to follow work is worth more than every other precaution combined.

Why advances dominate

Because the process is genuinely long, genuinely opaque to the client, and genuinely involves third parties whose fees must be paid. Every one of those facts is true, and every one is used to justify a structure in which the money moves first and the work is unverifiable.

What a legitimate structure looks like

• A modest engagement fee for the initial assessment and document review — real work, reasonably paid in advance.
• Government and due diligence fees paid at the point they are actually incurred, ideally by you directly to the authority where the programme permits it.
• The provider's fee in tranches against verifiable milestones: file submitted with a receipt number, due diligence cleared, approval in principle received.
• A final tranche on the grant.
• Escrow for the investment itself where the programme provides for it, which serious programmes do.

What verifiable means

A milestone you can check independently: a case reference from the authority, a receipt from the government, a letter on the authority's letterhead that you can verify by contacting them. A screenshot from the provider is not a milestone.

The pattern to recognise

• A large first payment described as covering government fees, without receipts.
• A request for further payment for a stage that was not in the original schedule.
• An explanation involving a change in the programme that requires more money now.
• Pressure created by a deadline that only the provider knows about.
• Reluctance to put the milestone structure in writing.

The rule

Never pay for a stage that has not happened, and never pay more in total than you are prepared to lose entirely. In a market where enforcement across borders is slow and expensive, the payment structure is the enforcement.