We Dug Into Swamgull.com: Legit Store or A Scam?

Swamgull.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase various goods at extremely low prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is in fact just a ploy 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, inferior or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the red flags regarding the Swamgull.com store, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Swamgull.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Swamgull.com may initially look like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a quick analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of customer support and customer feedback – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Swamgull.com Scam

By shopping on websites like Swamgull.com, it is improbable that you will acquire the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases common for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to counterfeit items of popular brands, the standard 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 often case when ordering from sites that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the trade look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, rascals may ship a incidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.

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

Swamgull.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Swamgull.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with certain 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 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 legitimate, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 consumers are on the website, swindlers do their best to make the consumers 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 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, fraudsters 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 feedback regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough customers are aware about the deceptive activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Swamgull.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, 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

Fraud sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack buyer opinions when they have just started, as there were just a few consumers 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 phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on dishonest 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% reductions are not viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, deceptive sites set the prices 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 sell-off has its sane limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes scam websites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the customers, 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 site will have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer a contact email, or even a phone number to contact them, there is a huge chance that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or they will answer you with generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers tend to reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are mentioned on a totally 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 not a guarantee, as there are plenty of genuine 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: 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 crypto transactions expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scams.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As rascals most likely don’t have any goods on hand, they are not able to shoot unique pics. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scams sell identical items on different websites, you can find such images on similarly-designed scam sites. 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As frauds may scam people on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam 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 page you’ve started on. 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

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Swamgull.com site, along with similar scam sites, are promoted by malware. Adware and browser hijackers are two particular malware types that aim specifically at such purposes. If you notice excessive ads in your web browser, see your search inquiries redirected in an unusual search engine and some random pages open time to time, scan 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

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Swamgull.com Scam