Fleeky-shop.nl is a fraudulent 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 in fact just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. After ordering goods from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Fleeky-shop.nl site, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.
Fleeky-shop.nl Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Fleeky-shop.nl may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and customer feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Fleeky-shop.nl |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.71 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Fleeky-shop.nl Scam
By shopping on sites like Fleeky-shop.nl, it is improbable that you will receive the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 instances standard 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 mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly frequent case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may send a random item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn really inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most frequent situation when ordering goods from sites like Fleeky-shop.nl. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.
Fleeky-shop.nl scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Fleeky-shop.nl follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight 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 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 site, tricksters do their best to make the consumers 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 peculiar 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.
Why is Fleeky-shop.nl 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, 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
Fraud websites 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 buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were just a few consumers 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 unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest websites you will get an entire saltcellar. Do not hesitate searching 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every discount has its sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit 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 contact them, there is a huge possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.
As scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure that this is 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 plenty of trustworthy shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has 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 cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As fraudsters most likely don’t have any items on hand, they cannot create unique images. Thus their only option is to steal these images from other websites. When crooks offer identical goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam sites. 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 use the same topic repeatedly, 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, reverse image search 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 particularly easy, but scoundrels who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
