I think a buyer is trying to defraud me. How can I protect myself

Hello, all! I have a new-ish seller account (I don’t think I have any feedback yet) and I listed my first items a couple months ago. Sales have trickled but they’re fairly high ticket items so the membership at least pays for itself. Fast forward to about a month ago, I got an order for roughly $1k worth of these items. After some haggling, we agreed to a bulk price and I shipped them to an American address. Come today, I get a message from the buyer saying that they arrived to him (in Africa) with heavy scratches and some having deformed batteries despite all of them being new and sealed in box. They provided no pictures and all they’ve done so far is send me a message. I suspect they are trying to defraud me. Is there anything I can do proactively to protect myself?