Jihoawen.com Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Jihoawen.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase clothes at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Jihoawen.com site, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Jihoawen.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Jihoawen.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of user support and user reviews – this site accomplishes the scam bingo right away.

Jihoawen.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Jihoawen.com, it is unlikely that you will receive the items you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios typical 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 standard 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 particularly common case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most usual situation when ordering from sites like Jihoawen.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Jihoawen.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Jihoawen.com runs 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. Frauds 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially convincing 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 users are on the site, scammers do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good 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 individuals 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, 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 swindlers, “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 just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Jihoawen.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, frauds 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 reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, as there were not many buyers 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 obscure or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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 Thanksgiving day. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices 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 logical limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest 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 site 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 to contact them, there is a huge chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a 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 lot of trustworthy services and shops 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, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their only option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scams market the same goods on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-looking 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

Scammers do not steal only pictures. As scammers may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new URL, 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 site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams particularly easy, but scoundrels who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Jihoawen.com Scam