Tinyogiant.com Scam Store: A Fake Apple Website

Tinyogiant.com is a fraudulent website that offers to buy electronics from Apple 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 story to make you think this site is legitimate. After 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 highlight the warning signs regarding the Tinyogiant.com store, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.

Tinyogiant.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Tinyogiant.com may initially seem like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Unfair advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, absence of user support and customer reviews – this site completes the fraud bingo right away.

Tinyogiant.com Scam

By shopping on sites like Tinyogiant.com, it is unlikely that you will get the items you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 instances standard 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 attribute will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically frequent case when ordering from pages 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, frauds may ship 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 – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Absolutely nothing. This is the most usual scenario when ordering from sites like Tinyogiant.com. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams are not going to exist for a long time, scammers are not wasting time creating even a remote semblance of legitimacy.

Tinyogiant.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Tinyogiant.com follows a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of promotions 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 deem 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 users are on the site, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Mind-boggling 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 swindlers, “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 simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals are aware about the fraudulent activity, the profits will dry up, leaving crooks with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Tinyogiant.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the fraud 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

Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with feedback. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack customer reviews when they have just started, since there were only 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 sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or drivel 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% reductions are not feasible 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 outrageous, 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 reasonable limits.

3. No customer support.

That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the genuine 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 (if it is present at all) – the page will have no contact info whatsoever.

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

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

As scoundrels tend to reuse phone numbers and email addresses for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they are used on a completely different website, be sure you are 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 plenty of trustworthy shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. Each of the latter has the same feature 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, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in crypto, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As scams most likely don’t have any items, they cannot shoot unique images. Thus their only option is simply to steal these images elsewhere. When rascals sell identical goods on different websites, you can find such images 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

Rascals do not steal only pics. As frauds may use the same topic repeatedly, 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 advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scammers who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Tinyogiant.com Scam