Is Osherkoch.com Legit or a Scam? What You Need to Know

Osherkoch.com is a scam website that offers to purchase items at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. Upon ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Osherkoch.com store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.

Osherkoch.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Osherkoch.com may initially seem like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer feedback – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Osherkoch.com Scam

By purchasing items on pages like Osherkoch.com, it is questionable that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 fraudulent 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 particularly 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, frauds may ship a random item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common situation when ordering from websites like Osherkoch.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting time creating even a faint sight of legitimacy.

Osherkoch.com scam – How does it work?

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

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post abundant amounts of promotions on online platforms, 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 regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 customers are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals 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 individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a strange 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 crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving swindlers with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Osherkoch.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, scammers 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 purpose (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack client testimonials when they have just started, as there were just 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site sells, 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 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 trustworthy 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 ridiculous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold for cheap, but every discount has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page (if it is present at all) – 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 number to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some 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 appear 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 shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same pitfall 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, there’s no way to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any items, they cannot make unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images from other websites. When crooks market identical goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam sites. By searching for the image 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may use 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, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such frauds particularly easy, but crooks who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Osherkoch.com Scam