Mokavape.com Review: A Fake Store You Should Avoid

Mokavape.com is a scam website that offers to purchase vape accessories at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

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

Mokavape.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Mokavape.com may initially appear like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Mokavape.com Scam

By shopping on pages like Mokavape.com, it is uncertain that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 cases 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 grade will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically often case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a brand new one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical scenario when ordering from sites like Mokavape.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Mokavape.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Mokavape.com follows 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 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 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the users 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, scammers 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 fraudsters, “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 grievances and user feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they just 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 profits will dry up, leaving scammers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Mokavape.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 fraudulent 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 purpose (and way) to make any reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, since there were not many consumers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% discounts are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ludicrous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest 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 page will likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great chance 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 often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a different website, be sure you are 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 a lot of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: they do not suppose any refunds. 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 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 scammers most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they cannot create unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When crooks sell identical items on different pages, you can find such images 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 rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scoundrels who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Mokavape.com Scam