Is Oafma.com Safe or a Scam? Crucial Info Here

Oafma.com is a scam website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a narrative 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 demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Oafma.com store, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Oafma.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Oafma.com may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, lack of customer support and customer reviews – this site fulfills the scam bingo right away.

Oafma.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Oafma.com, it is questionable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 cases characteristic 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 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 specifically common case when ordering from websites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common outcome when ordering items from websites like Oafma.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a vague sight of legitimacy.

Oafma.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Oafma.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of marketing on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially compelling 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 website, tricksters do their best to make the customers buy something. Impossibly good 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 consumers stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a quirky 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 fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once swindlers get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports 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 fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Oafma.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the hoax 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

Fraud 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 user feedback shortly after the start, since there were only a few 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 nothing to do with what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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 feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, fraudulent sites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be ridiculous, 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.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will most likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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 huge chance that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scoundrels often reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned 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 not a guarantee, as there are a lot of genuine 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: they do not suppose any refunds. And this is what makes it so attractive to scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any real items, they are not able to shoot unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other sites. When scammers sell the same goods on different sites, you can find same images on similarly-looking fraudulent pages. 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

Rascals do not stop on stealing pictures. As frauds may use the same topic again and again, they use the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search 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

Frequently Asked Questions about the Oafma.com Scam