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

Letlade.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy various goods at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Letlade.com site, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Letlade.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Letlade.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Letlade.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Letlade.com, it is unlikely that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 cases common 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 grade 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 specifically common case when ordering from sites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a accidental item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering goods from pages like Letlade.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, fraudsters do not bother themselves with creating even a slight semblance of legitimacy.

Letlade.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Letlade.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of advertisements 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 individuals are on the site, tricksters 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 unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, fraudsters 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 feedback 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 customers are aware 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 Letlade.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 deceptive 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, as there were not many patrons 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 nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive websites 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 at a low price, but every sell-off has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will most likely have no contact info at all.

Typically for fraudulent websites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a great 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 scoundrels tend to reuse numbers and emails 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 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 services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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 paid for the order, 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 crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds most likely don’t have any items on hand, they cannot shoot unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When rascals sell identical items on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking 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 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 on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Letlade.com Scam