Analyzing Elevermint.store: Should You Trust It? Our Take

Elevermint.store 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 actually just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Elevermint.store shop, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Elevermint.store Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Elevermint.store may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and customer reviews – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.

Elevermint.store Scam

By purchasing on websites like Elevermint.store, it is unlikely that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 situations characteristic for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the grade will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate 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 delivered item, cheats may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dirty aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common scenario when ordering from pages like Elevermint.store. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Elevermint.store scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Elevermint.store 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 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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 customers are on the website, scammers do their best to make the customers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, 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 peculiar 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 tricksters, “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 grievances and user reports regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Elevermint.store a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive 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

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were just a few customers 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, when you face phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive sites 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

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

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone number to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scoundrels often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a different website, be sure you are facing a blatant scam.

A chain of scam websites 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 plenty of benign 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: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. 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 are unlikely to have any real items on hand, they cannot shoot unique pictures. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When frauds offer the same items on different pages, you can find such images on similarly-designed 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 frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Elevermint.store Scam