Cyboif.com Scam Store: A Fake Walmart Website

Cyboif.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase electronics from Walmart 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 likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the warning signs regarding the Cyboif.com site, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Cyboif.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Cyboif.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and user feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Cyboif.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like Cyboif.com, it is unlikely that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations standard 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 attribute 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 particularly often case when ordering from pages that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may send a random item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent scenario when ordering from pages like Cyboif.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting effort creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.

Cyboif.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Cyboif.com runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant amounts of advertisements on online platforms, 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially persuasive 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 customers are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the consumers buy something. Impossibly good 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 unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

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

Why is Cyboif.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scams 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, as there were only a few buyers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, deceptive sites have the initial price 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 sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – the site will likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

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

As scammers tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a 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 a lot of legit shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites 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 scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any goods, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their option is simply to steal these images from other sites. When frauds market identical items on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam pages. By searching for the image 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

Scammers do not stop on stealing pics. As rascals may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds pretty easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Cyboif.com Scam