Tmmmall.cyou is a scam website that offers to buy items at exceptionally cheap 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. Upon ordering goods from this site, you will likely get nothing at all, or, at best, inferior or counterfeit items.
In this article, I will highlight the concerning indicators regarding the Tmmmall.cyou shop, the way this scam operates, and teach how to detect similar frauds. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in future.
Tmmmall.cyou Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Tmmmall.cyou may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Unfair advertising methods, excessively low prices, absence of customer support and customer testimonials – this site fulfills the fraud bingo right away.
| Website | Tmmmall.cyou |
| Hosting | AS152194 CTG Server Limited Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| IP Address | 112.213.117.205 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Tmmmall.cyou Scam
By purchasing on sites like Tmmmall.cyou, it is unlikely that you will get the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, it results in one of 3 situations typical for scam sites.
Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake 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 particularly often case when ordering from websites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look legit, but spend even less money on the actual item, scammers may ship a random item they have on hand instead of what you’ve ordered. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn really inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most typical situation when ordering goods from pages like Tmmmall.cyou. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a faint visibility of legitimacy.
Tmmmall.cyou scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Tmmmall.cyou runs 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 huge amounts of advertisements 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 deem ads on the mentioned platforms benign, they do not doubt anything at this point. Ads become especially 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 consumers are on the site, deceivers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discounts, free shipping, 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 strange manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers 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 fraudsters, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.
Step 3 – Vanish. Once scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough grievances and user reports about the site being a scam, they just vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the fraudulent activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving crooks with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.
Why is Tmmmall.cyou 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
Scam sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack user feedback shortly after the start, as there were not many clients 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 unrealistic reviews that have nothing to do with what the site markets, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on deceptive websites 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 trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, scam websites have the initial price 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 sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes scam sites from the benign 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 contact info at all.
Typically for fraudulent sites, 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 numbers and emails will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.
As scammers 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 you’re facing a blatant scam.
A chain of scam websites 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 lot of genuine shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. 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 paid for the order, nothing will help you to get the money back.
Some websites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, which is even less controllable than aforementioned payment methods. While crypto transactions 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 items, they cannot make unique pics. Thus their only option is to hijack these images elsewhere. When scammers market the same items on different websites, you can find such pics on similarly-looking fraudulent 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 parasite on the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new URL, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search on Google advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the original site. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but crooks who run them never aim at cautious users.
Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design
