Lprofuse.monster is a scam website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Lprofuse.monster store, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.
Lprofuse.monster Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Lprofuse.monster may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of user support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Lprofuse.monster |
| Hosting | AS205056 DIAHOSTING LIMITED United Kingdom, London |
| IP Address | 165.231.3.123 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Lprofuse.monster Scam
By purchasing on pages like Lprofuse.monster, it is improbable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios 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 attribute 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 especially frequent case when ordering from sites that sell 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 random item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a brand 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 common situation when ordering from websites like Lprofuse.monster. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam sites do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting effort creating even a remote visibility of legitimacy.
Lprofuse.monster scam – How does it work?
As any scam, Lprofuse.monster 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. Frauds post huge amounts of promotions on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt 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 users are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the customers 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 individuals 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 scammers, “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 complaints and user feedback 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 customers know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving scammers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Lprofuse.monster a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the fraud 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
Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, since there were only a few customers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, scam 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 for cheap, but every discount has its sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes fraudulent websites from the benign 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 – 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 number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.
As scammers tend to reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely 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 shops and services 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 makes it so attractive to scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some sites may also offer payments in crypto, which feature even less control. 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 frauds most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other websites. When crooks offer the same goods on different websites, you can find same images 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
Scammers do not stop on stealing photos. As scammers may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who create them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
