Carcerless.com Under Investigation – Scam or Legit? Read This

Carcerless.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Carcerless.com store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Carcerless.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Carcerless.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer testimonials – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Carcerless.com Scam

By purchasing items on websites like Carcerless.com, it is unlikely that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios common for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the characteristic will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially often case when ordering from sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may ship a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common case when ordering items from websites like Carcerless.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just disappear. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting time creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Carcerless.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Carcerless.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of marketing on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as their sites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free delivery, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a strange manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to deceivers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Carcerless.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, scammers do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Scam websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, since there were not many consumers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and requires confirmation by other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Do not hesitate searching for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will most likely have no contact info whatsoever.

Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge chance that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a totally different site, be sure you are facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam sites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are plenty of legit shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When fraudsters sell identical items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam pages. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove the uniqueness of an image.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As rascals may use the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Carcerless.com site, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive amounts of ads appearing in your browser, have your search queries going in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan your system with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Carcerless.com Scam