In the Moroccan e-commerce ecosystem, we know the classic scams: fake sites, non-conforming products, ghost sellers. But there's a far more insidious fraud, rarely covered in the media, that directly affects online merchants: order hijacking by the delivery drivers themselves. A scam made possible by the cash-on-delivery (COD) model that dominates the market.
How does this scam work?
The scheme is simple but devastatingly effective. A driver works for a delivery company partnered with multiple e-merchants. They have access to key information for each order: the product, the customer's name and address, and the amount to collect. By manipulating this information, they can set up a nearly invisible hijacking system.
Here's the step-by-step method. The driver receives an order to deliver — say a smartphone for 3,000 MAD. They identify the supplier (often visible on the package or in the management system). They buy the same product directly from the supplier themselves, sometimes at the same wholesale price. They then deliver THEIR version of the product to the customer and collect the 3,000 MAD in cash. Then they return to the delivery company with the original package, declaring a 'customer refusal.' The e-merchant gets their product back but has lost both the sale and the customer.
Why is this fraud so hard to detect?
That's the evil genius of this scam: nobody seems to lose at first glance. The e-merchant gets their product back — they simply think the customer refused the delivery, which is extremely common in Morocco (COD refusal rates range between 20 and 35%). The customer receives their product and pays the agreed price — they have no reason to complain. As for the driver, they pocket the margin between their purchase price and the selling price, with total discretion.
The only clue? An abnormally high refusal rate on certain delivery routes. But in a country where COD return rates are already very high, this anomaly often goes unnoticed. A clever driver can hijack 5 to 10 orders per week without raising suspicion, accumulating thousands of dirhams in illicit gains every month.
A phenomenon amplified by the COD structure
This scam is only possible due to three structural flaws in the Moroccan COD model. First, the driver has access to all necessary information: product, supplier, customer, price. They are the trusted link in the entire chain, but nothing verifies their integrity beyond simple cash collection. Second, cash is untraceable: unlike an electronic payment, there's no digital trail of the transaction between driver and customer. Third, refusals are normalized: in an ecosystem where 1 in 4 packages returns to the seller, 'one more return' alarms nobody.
In France, a similar fraud network involving complicit delivery drivers was dismantled in 2024, with estimated damages between 20 and 30 million euros for companies like Amazon, Auchan, and Ikea. The method varied slightly — fake returns with return code scanning by a complicit mail carrier — but the principle was identical: exploiting the driver's trusted position in the logistics chain.
The invisible victims
The e-merchant is the main victim, even if they often don't know it. They lose the sale, the customer (who won't return to their site since they were 'served' by the driver), and the logistics costs of the fake delivery attempt. Multiply that by dozens of orders and the losses become considerable. For a small Moroccan e-merchant operating on thin margins, these invisible losses can make the difference between survival and bankruptcy.
The customer can also be unknowingly harmed: the product received from the driver has no warranty from the official seller, no valid invoice, no after-sales service. If the product breaks down, they have no recourse.
How to protect yourself?
Several measures can reduce the risk: use branded packaging with unique tracking numbers and tamper-proof seals, implement a delivery confirmation system with photo or OTP code sent to the customer, analyze data to detect drivers with abnormally high refusal rates, and call customers whose orders are declared 'refused' to verify.
But the most radical solution is to remove cash from the equation entirely. If payment is secured upfront through a trusted third party, the driver has no cash to collect and the scam becomes impossible. This is exactly what an escrow service enables: the buyer pays online, funds are securely held, and they're only released to the seller after delivery confirmation. The driver goes back to being a simple transporter, with no access to the money.
COD: a system running on fumes
This scam is yet another symptom of a model reaching its limits. Cash on delivery was a necessary crutch to launch e-commerce in Morocco in a context of low trust. But its flaws — high refusal rates, fraud risks, logistics costs, weakened cash flow — are now holding back the sector's growth. The transition to secured upfront payments is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity. And escrow offers the ideal bridge between current distrust and a mature, reliable e-commerce ecosystem.