We Looked at the Evidence: Is Focoor.com Legit or Scam?

Focoor.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy accessory at exceptionally cheap prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the warning signs regarding the Focoor.com store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in upcoming times.

Focoor.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Focoor.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Focoor.com Scam

By shopping on websites like Focoor.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More often, 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the characteristic 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 notably frequent case when ordering from websites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent case when ordering from websites like Focoor.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scam sites are not going to exist for a long time, fraudsters are not wasting effort creating even a slight sight of legitimacy.

Focoor.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Focoor.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post huge 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not doubt 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once consumers are on the site, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, 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 curious manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Focoor.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 untrustworthy 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 purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions 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 vague or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites 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% reductions are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, fraudulent sites have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes fraudulent sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, 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 page 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 huge chance 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 scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, be sure you’re 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 complementary, as there are a lot of benign 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 makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals are unlikely to have any real items, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their only option is to steal these images from other websites. When frauds offer identical goods on different websites, you can find same pics on similarly-designed fraudulent 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 use the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new URL, 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 copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering 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 Focoor.com Scam