Investigating LoisAmsterdam.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

LoisAmsterdam.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase clothing 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 story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon 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 concerning indicators regarding the LoisAmsterdam.com site, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

LoisAmsterdam.com Site – Scam Overview

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

LoisAmsterdam.com Scam

By purchasing items on sites like LoisAmsterdam.com, it is doubtful that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 fake items of popular brands, the standard 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 especially often case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look legit, but spend even less money on the delivered item, scammers may ship a incidental item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most typical scenario when ordering items from sites like LoisAmsterdam.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

LoisAmsterdam.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, LoisAmsterdam.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of promotions on online platforms, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 customers are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed users 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, 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 swindlers, “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 just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is LoisAmsterdam.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is fraudulent without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were not many buyers 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or gibberish reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive sites 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent sites set the prices 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.

That factor distinguishes scam sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the customers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the site will likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, be sure that this is 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 not a guarantee, as there are a whole lot of benign services 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 sites may also ask for payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As frauds are unlikely to have any items, they cannot create unique pics. Thus their option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When rascals market the same items on different sites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking scam sites. 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 rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. 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

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when LoisAmsterdam.com website, together with similar scam pages, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types known for such behavior. If you see excessive amounts of ads appearing in your browser, have your search queries redirected in a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your computer with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

To use Gridinsoft for remove malicious threats, follow the steps below:

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Be patient, as the scan duration depends on the number of files and your computer's hardware capabilities. Use this time to relax or attend to other tasks.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the LoisAmsterdam.com Scam