In an industry where carrier identity theft and double brokering schemes cost hundreds of millions annually, Descartes has emerged as a frontline defender against fraud in freight transportation. The company’s innovative approach to securing the supply chain has earned it recognition as a winner of the 2025 FreightWaves Fraud Fighter Awards.
“The surge in carrier identity theft and double brokering is still the biggest threat we face in over-the-road fraud,” explains Descartes. Fraudulent operators employ sophisticated tactics, from stealing login credentials to purchasing unused MC numbers, allowing them to impersonate legitimate companies. Once they’ve established a false identity, these bad actors either “accept a tendered load and outright steal the freight, or in some cases re-broker loads to legitimate carriers – taking the payment from the shipper but never paying the carrier that moved the freight.”
These schemes don’t just result in financial losses—they fundamentally “undermine trust across the supply chain” and have grown so widespread that combating them has become the company’s “number one priority in fraud prevention.”
Descartes’ approach to fraud prevention has evolved significantly over time. “Years ago, like many in the industry, we started with manual carrier vetting – making sure a carrier had the proper authority, insurance, and a decent safety record,” the company notes. However, as fraud schemes grew more sophisticated, they “continuously raised the bar.”
This evolution led to a transition from reactive checks to proactive protection: “Today, any carrier we approve is continuously tracked for compliance issues or red flags, so we can catch problems (like a sudden authority revocation, expired insurance, odd changes to FMCSA) immediately.”
A key innovation has been the implementation of community-driven protection. Descartes built this element into their MyCarrierPortal platform, where their “broad network of shippers and brokers now share real-time Incident Reports about bad actors, and users can see what carriers are ‘Blocked’ by others in the MCP community – creating an early warning system that protects everyone on the platform.”
Following its 2024 integration into Descartes, MCP enhanced its capabilities by incorporating “a carrier’s tracking history to show their operating profile, added real-time location tracking alerts for spoofed or suspicious activities, VOIP phone detection, fleet verification (overbooked alerts), and several other capabilities.” This comprehensive approach provides protection throughout the freight journey—“during carrier vetting, tendering, pre-pickup, and post-pickup activities.”
“Data and automation have completely changed the game,” according to Descartes. “The biggest shift is the ability to harness vast amounts of data – and analyze it in real time – to detect fraud.”
Rather than relying on intuition or paper documentation, the company now utilizes platforms that “continuously monitor everything from carrier credentials to live GPS signals.” This advanced technology can evaluate “billions of location data points” to identify suspicious patterns, such as truck movements that don’t match supposed routes, and “alert us to potential fraud before it happens.”
Descartes highlights that “the integration of real-time freight visibility with identity verification is a game-changer.” For instance, MyCarrierPortal now leverages tracking history from the MacroPoint™ network—if a carrier “has never tracked a load or has poor visibility compliance, that’s a red flag we see during vetting.”
This fusion of “big data analytics with on-the-ground freight operations” has created “faster, smarter fraud prevention that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago.”
Descartes MyCarrierPortal: Pre-Tender Defense
MyCarrierPortal serves as Descartes’ leading carrier onboarding and vetting solution, designed to “stop fraud before it reaches your freight.” The platform prevents double brokering through VIN verification and identity matching, carrier impersonation via DOT data monitoring, falsified insurance through automated COI verification, and unauthorized access with role-based user control.
Key features include real-time red flag alerts for FMCSA inconsistencies, VIN and GPS verification to confirm vehicle ownership and presence, COI monitoring from verified insurance agents, and customizable onboarding standards. This comprehensive approach ensures carriers are “legitimate, compliant, and trustworthy—before you tender the load.”
Once a load is tendered, MacroPoint provides the next layer of protection through “real-time shipment visibility and in-transit fraud detection.” The platform “continuously monitors the physical movement of shipments and compares tracking data with the carrier of record,” helping to identify load hijacking, GPS spoofing, and unexpected delays or route deviations that might indicate fraudulent behavior.
With “over a decade of experience and connections to the largest network of ELDs, telematics, and driver apps, MacroPoint brings unmatched transparency to every mile.”
The effectiveness of Descartes’ fraud prevention technology is demonstrated by real-world successes. “About a month ago we released some new fraud alert capabilities in MacroPoint, including VOIP phone detection when tracking, overbooked carriers, among many other alerts,” the company shares. “On the very first day we released the alerts one of our large LSP customers turned on the alerts and almost immediately was alerted of a VOIP phone being used by a driver on his way to pick up a valuable load of copper.”
This early warning prompted further investigation, which “uncovered that it was someone posing as a legitimate carrier, and they secured the freight and prevented the theft.” Descartes notes that they “hear more stories like this every day from our customers who are able to stop thefts before they happen.”
The combined impact of MyCarrierPortal and MacroPoint is impressive, with 99.7% VIN validation accuracy, 80% time savings on manual vetting, up to 90% reduction in fraud-related issues, 97% of carrier COIs on file, and millions of shipments tracked annually.
Descartes advises industry participants to “Know Your Carrier” by implementing “a rigorous vetting process and never skip it – even when freight is hot and time is short.” Companies should verify that carriers are properly licensed, insured, and have solid safety records by using “the FMCSA databases, insurance certificates, and tools like Descartes MyCarrierPortal to confirm identity and legitimacy.”
Looking to the future, Descartes anticipates that “freight fraud becoming even more sophisticated in the near future,” with schemes potentially involving “artificial intelligence, deeper identity falsification, and cyber elements (hacking or system tampering).” To combat these evolving threats, the company emphasizes that “the number one thing we can do as an industry is work together and share information” and “push for harsher punishments for this type of crime.”
As freight fraud continues to evolve, Descartes remains committed to providing end-to-end protection that combines security, compliance, and automation—equipping businesses to confidently and comprehensively protect their operations in an increasingly complex threat landscape.
