Faunasports.uk is a scam website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Faunasports.uk shop, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.
Faunasports.uk Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Faunasports.uk may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Faunasports.uk |
| Hosting | AS45102 Alibaba (US) Technology Co., Ltd. United Kingdom, London |
| IP Address | 8.208.88.24 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Faunasports.uk Scam
By purchasing items on sites like Faunasports.uk, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, 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 imitation items of popular brands, the quality 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 notably often 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, scammers may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most typical outcome when ordering goods from websites like Faunasports.uk. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scams are not wasting time creating even a slight visibility of legitimacy.
Faunasports.uk scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Faunasports.uk runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post abundant amounts of promotions on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the site, scammers do their best to make the consumers 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, 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 swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Faunasports.uk 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, 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, since there were not many patrons 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, 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 sane limits.
3. No customer support.
This is what distinguishes dishonest websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, 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 most likely have no support contacts whatsoever.
Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty
When they offer an email, or even a phone number to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a completely different website, 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 plenty of trustworthy 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: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.
Some sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different rascals.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As scammers most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scammers offer the same goods on different websites, you can find same images on similarly-designed fraudulent pages. By searching for the image 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 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 I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
