Smith-newyork.com is a scam website that offers to purchase various clothing at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After ordering from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the warning signs regarding the Smith-newyork.com site, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.
Smith-newyork.com Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Smith-newyork.com may initially look like a genuine 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 dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, lack of customer support and user reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Smith-newyork.com |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Canada, Ottawa |
| IP Address | 23.227.38.65 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Smith-newyork.com Scam
By shopping on pages like Smith-newyork.com, it is improbable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations 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 quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may inform about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially frequent case when ordering from pages that offer baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may send a random item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.
Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent situation when ordering goods from sites like Smith-newyork.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, scammers do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.
Smith-newyork.com scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Smith-newyork.com follows 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 advertisements on social media, 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 suspect 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 disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.
Step 2 – Take the Money. Once individuals are on the site, fraudsters do their best to make the users buy something. Mind-boggling 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 users 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, scammers 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 rascals get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances 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 people know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.
Why is Smith-newyork.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, rascals 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 online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were not many clients 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 no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent 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% discounts are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Thanksgiving day. In some cases, fraudulent sites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, 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.
This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the genuine ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam 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 at all.
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 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 inquiry.
As scammers tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different site, 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 whole lot of legit services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. All of them though have the same feature I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, nothing will help you 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 scammers.
5. Items’ images are sourced from another page
As frauds are unlikely to have any items on hand, they are not able to shoot unique images. Thus their option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When crooks sell identical items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-designed fraudulent pages. 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
Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As frauds may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to uncover such scams particularly easy, but scammers who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
Frequently Asked Questions about the Smith-newyork.com Scam
- Contact your bank or card provider and ask about chargeback options.
- Save screenshots, receipts, tracking numbers, and emails as evidence.
- Change reused passwords and enable two-factor authentication on important accounts.
- Watch for follow-up phishing emails pretending to offer refunds or delivery updates.
In October 2024, I ordered from bestbestones.com. This site advertised the same products and advertised they were made in the USA. I paid for the advertised 3 – 5 day shipping. I was sent a tracking number and when I tried to follow my items, the site said the tracking number was unknown. I sent several emails to the site and never received a response. Eventually, almost 3 weeks later the package arrived. The tracking history showed it was shipped from China but the return address label on the outside of the package listed Monica, 20 Willow St., Normal, IL 61761. I disputed the charge with my credit card company was given full credit.
I then received an email from Oliver at SCENERY TRADE CO., LIMITED, trying to explain things. I checked and found that SCENERY TRADE CO., LIMITED is registered with the Colorado Department of State (CDOS). The entity was formed on January 12, 2024 in the jurisdiction of Colorado. The registered office location is at 1312 17th Street Unit #2199, Denver, CO 80202. The current entity status is good standing. The registered agent of the entity is ZHEXI ZHANG . The agent office address is 1312 17th Street Unit #2199, Denver, CO 80202.
I further checked the registered office location appears to be a “Mail Drop” and has roughly 55 company listings as their registered office location. Almost all the listed companies have an Asian named Agent.
As far as the return address of Monica goes, it appears to be non-existent. There is an East and West Willow St but no “Willow” street.
There is more but you get the picture. This has all the markings of an organized multi-leveled scam that keeps changing company names, addresses, agents and products.