Sanctuaryeunique.com Fraud Warning: Don’t Fall for Their Deceptive Tactics

Sanctuaryeunique.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy flowers at exceptionally cheap 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. After 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 highlight the red flags regarding the Sanctuaryeunique.com site, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Sanctuaryeunique.com Site – Scam Overview

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

Sanctuaryeunique.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Sanctuaryeunique.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More often, 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 imitation items of popular brands, the quality 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 notably frequent case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may ship a random item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent outcome when ordering items from sites like Sanctuaryeunique.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a faint semblance of legitimacy.

Sanctuaryeunique.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Sanctuaryeunique.com runs 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 abundant amounts of advertisements on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say exactly 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 doubt 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 consumers are on the website, deceivers do their best to make the users buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free delivery, 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 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 tricksters get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback regarding the site being a scam, they simply disappear. 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 swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Sanctuaryeunique.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, 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 online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, as there were not many patrons 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 sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel 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. 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 Thanksgiving day. In some cases, scam websites have the initial price 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 sell-off has its logical limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes fraudulent sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud the buyers, there’s no need to bother about 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 huge chance that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure you’re facing 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 using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have 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 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 rascals.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scammers are unlikely to have any goods on hand, they cannot create unique pics. Thus their option is to steal these images from other websites. When fraudsters offer identical items on different pages, you can find same 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 scammers may scam people on the same topic again and again, they use the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams pretty easy, but criminals who create them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Sanctuaryeunique.com Scam