We Looked at the Evidence: Is Shopreleaser.com Legit or Scam?

Shopreleaser.com is a scam website that offers to buy women clothing at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a narrative to make you think this site is legitimate. Upon placing an order on this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will show the red flags regarding the Shopreleaser.com shop, the way this deception operates, and show how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Shopreleaser.com Site – Scam Overview

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

Shopreleaser.com Scam

By purchasing on sites like Shopreleaser.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 situations typical 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 attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may mention about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a particularly common case when ordering from sites that market baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, cheats may send a accidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most common scenario when ordering from websites like Shopreleaser.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then just vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds do not bother themselves with creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Shopreleaser.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Shopreleaser.com follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of promotions on online platforms, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms genuine, 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 mask 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. Impossibly good 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 users stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a unusual manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, tricksters 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 about the site being a scam, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people are aware about the deceptive activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Shopreleaser.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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, as 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the site 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% markdowns are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, deceptive websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be preposterous, 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 deceptive websites from the benign 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 page will have no support contacts at all.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone to reach them out, there is a great possibility that these emails and numbers will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally different website, be sure you are 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 complementary, as there are a lot of genuine 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 attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.

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

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When fraudsters offer the same items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed fraudulent pages. By searching for the image 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

Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As frauds may parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It allows you to uncover such scams pretty easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Shopreleaser.com Scam