Toptakp.com Scam Store: A Fake Online Shop

Toptakp.com is a fraudulent website that offers to purchase rugs and carpets at unusually discounted prices. This site may look like a discounter or a reseller of goods from stock liquidation, but it is actually just a story to make you think this site is legitimate. 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 show the red flags regarding the Toptakp.com site, the way this scam operates, and explain how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in future.

Toptakp.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Toptakp.com may initially look like a legit discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a short analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Unfair advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and user feedback – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Toptakp.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Toptakp.com, it is doubtful that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More often, it results in one of 3 scenarios standard 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 frequent case when ordering from pages that offer 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, scammers may send a incidental item they have instead of what you’ve ordered. An old t-shirt instead of a new one, a scratched aluminum plate instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn rather inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common case when ordering from pages like Toptakp.com. Frauds take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, frauds are not wasting time creating even a remote sight of legitimacy.

Toptakp.com scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Toptakp.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 marketing 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 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 mask themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once customers are on the website, fraudsters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good 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 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, 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 tricksters, “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 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 customers are aware about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving fraudsters with no motivation to move on. Reporting the scam to the domain hosting helps take the domain down pretty quickly.

Why is Toptakp.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, fraudsters 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 websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit shopping sites will lack client testimonials shortly after the start, as there were only a few patrons 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 nothing to do with what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or nonsense reviews that may describe any item sold on the site should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on fraudulent websites 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 viable even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its rational limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes dishonest sites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, 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 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 chance that these contacts will be unresponsive to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your inquiry.

As frauds often reuse phone numbers and email addresses as “support” contacts, 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 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 lot of legit shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall 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, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some sites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While cryptocurrency payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different fraudsters.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any items on hand, they cannot make unique pictures. Thus their option is to steal these images elsewhere. When fraudsters sell the same goods on different pages, you can find same images on similarly-looking scam sites. By reverse image searching 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

Rascals do not stop on stealing pictures. As frauds may scam people on the same topic again and again, they reuse the same web design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the site you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such scams pretty easy, but scoundrels who run them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Is your PC infected?

There are situations when Toptakp.com site, together with similar scam pages, 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, have your search queries redirected into a different search engine and some random pages open time to time, consider scanning your PC with GridinSoft Anti-Malware. This will help you to get rid of annoying promotions and scam sites.

Remove malware with Gridinsoft Anti-Malware

We have also been using this software on our systems ever since, and it has always been successful in detecting viruses. It has blocked the most common adware as shown from our tests with the software, and we assure you that it can remove malware as well as other malware hiding on your computer.

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Frequently Asked Questions about the Toptakp.com Scam