Finsellet.life is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase various goods at extremely low prices. It may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story 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 demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Finsellet.life store, the way this deception operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.
Finsellet.life Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Finsellet.life may initially look like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and user feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Finsellet.life |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Germany, Munich |
| IP Address | 188.114.96.3 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Finsellet.life Scam
By shopping on websites like Finsellet.life, it is improbable that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases typical 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 attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform 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 sites that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered 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 scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering from sites like Finsellet.life. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a slight sight of legitimacy.
Finsellet.life scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Finsellet.life runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially 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, swindlers do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, 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 quirky manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, deceivers 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.
Why is Finsellet.life a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the hoax site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, rascals 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 feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack customer reviews shortly after the start, since there were only a few 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, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest websites have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every discount has its logical limits.
3. No customer support.
This is what distinguishes deceptive sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, 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 site 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 number to reach them out, there is a great chance that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a completely different site, be sure you’re 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 whole lot of benign shops and services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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 paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some websites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different frauds.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As rascals are unlikely to have any goods, they are not able to make unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When crooks sell identical items on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed fraudulent sites. 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
This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may scam people on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
