Carlos.fit is a deceptive website that offers to purchase appliances from Carrefour at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Carlos.fit store, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.
Carlos.fit Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Carlos.fit may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Carlos.fit |
| Hosting | AS396982 Google LLC United States, Kansas City |
| IP Address | 35.244.245.121 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Carlos.fit Scam
By purchasing items on sites like Carlos.fit, it is doubtful that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios typical for scam sites.
Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fraudulent items of popular brands, the grade will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially frequent case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most common outcome when ordering items from sites like Carlos.fit. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.
Carlos.fit scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Carlos.fit follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post huge amounts of promotions on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as the websites 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 benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discount promo codes, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed customers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.
Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, scammers 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 scammers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.
Step 3 – Vanish. Once tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Carlos.fit a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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
Fraud sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were not many buyers 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 offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague 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. Always search 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, 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 reasonable limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes deceptive sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will most likely have no contact info at all.
Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer an email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.
As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of benign services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.
Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As rascals most likely don’t have any items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When crooks sell the same items on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-designed scam pages. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.
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 scammers may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
