Investigating Spheriqa.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Spheriqa.com is a deceptive website that offers to buy items at unusually discounted 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 likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will highlight the red flags regarding the Spheriqa.com store, the way this scam operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Spheriqa.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Spheriqa.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of customer support and customer testimonials – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Spheriqa.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Spheriqa.com, it is unlikely that you will receive the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 fraudulent items of popular brands, the attribute 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 notably common case when ordering from sites that market 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 ship a random item they have on hand instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn rather inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most frequent case when ordering goods from websites like Spheriqa.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply disappear. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a slight sight of legitimacy.

Spheriqa.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Spheriqa.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post huge amounts of marketing on social media, 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 legitimate, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become particularly persuasive 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 website, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good 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 customers 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, deceivers 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 scammers, “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 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 cheats with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Spheriqa.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 deceptive 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

Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, as there were not many buyers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any vague or drivel 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest websites set the prices low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be absurd, 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 sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to rip off the customers, there’s no need to bother about answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will likely have no contact info whatsoever.

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 chance that these emails and numbers will be dead silent to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As scammers often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different website, 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 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: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you’ve sent the money, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency 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, they are not able to create unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals sell identical goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-designed scam 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

Scammers do not copy only photos. As rascals may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, reverse image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It allows you to unveil such scams particularly 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 Spheriqa.com Scam