Is Siooltd.com A Scam? The Hard Facts You Need To Know

Siooltd.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy various clothing and footwear at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, 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 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 Siooltd.com shop, the way this fraud operates, and explain how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Siooltd.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Siooltd.com may initially seem like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and user testimonials – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Siooltd.com Scam

By purchasing on pages like Siooltd.com, it is doubtful that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 scenarios 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 standard 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 notably frequent case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may send a random item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most frequent case when ordering from sites like Siooltd.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting effort creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.

Siooltd.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Siooltd.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 massive amounts of marketing 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the site, scammers do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, 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 curious 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 deceivers, “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 complaints and user reports about the site being fraudulent, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Siooltd.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 untrustworthy without risking your money. Fortunately, fraudsters 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 sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any reputation with feedback. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, since there were not many consumers 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 no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any blurred or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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% reductions are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites 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 at a low price, but every discount has its reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes deceptive websites from the genuine 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 site 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 contact them, there is a huge chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As frauds tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure that this is 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 plenty 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 paid for the order, there’s no way 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 fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters most likely don’t have any real items on hand, they are not able to make unique pictures. Thus their only option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When frauds offer identical goods on different pages, you can find same pics 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 use the same topic again and again, they reuse the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds particularly easy, but criminals who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are cases when Siooltd.com site, together with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you notice excessive ads appearing in your web browser, see your search inquiries redirected into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your device with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Siooltd.com Scam