We Dug Into Vastocea.online: Legit Store or A Scam?

Vastocea.online is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at extremely low prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy 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 show the red flags regarding the Vastocea.online shop, the way this fraud operates, and show how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping deceptions in upcoming times.

Vastocea.online Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Vastocea.online may initially appear like a authentic discounter or the merchant of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a disturbing amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s dishonesty. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and user testimonials – this site accomplishes the fraud bingo right away.

Vastocea.online Scam

By shopping on websites like Vastocea.online, it is questionable that you will obtain the items you’ve ordered. More commonly, it results in one of 3 situations standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to imitation items of popular brands, the standard will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may notify about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a especially frequent case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the deal look real, but spend even less money on the actual item, rascals may ship a random item they have instead of your order. A worn t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dented aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most typical case when ordering from sites like Vastocea.online. Fraudsters take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scam websites are not going to exist for a long time, rascals do not bother themselves with creating even a vague visibility of legitimacy.

Vastocea.online scam – How does it work?

As any fraud, Vastocea.online runs a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It commonly consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements on online platforms, 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 benign, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling 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, deceivers 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 users 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, 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 tricksters, “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 grievances and user reports regarding the site being a scam, they simply vanish. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the deceptive 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 Vastocea.online a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is untrustworthy 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

Hoax sites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no reason (and way) to make any online reputation with reviews. Obviously, even benign shopping sites will lack user feedback when they have just started, since 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, when you face unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site offers for sale, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any unclear or balderdash reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites 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% discounts are not trustworthy even during sales events such as the aforementioned Christmas. In some cases, scam websites have the initial price 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 for cheap, but every sell-off has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes deceptive sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to defraud 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 most likely have no support contacts whatsoever.

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

When they offer an email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge 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 numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a totally 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 complementary, as there are a whole lot of trustworthy services using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or similar payment systems. All of them though have the same feature 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, nothing will help you to get the money back.

Some sites may also offer payments in cryptocurrency, 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 rascals most likely don’t have any goods, they are not able to create unique pics. Thus their option is simply to hijack these images from other sites. When scams sell identical goods on different sites, you can find such images on similarly-looking 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

This is the continuation of the stolen images I’ve just described. As scammers may parasite on the same topic again and again, they put the same site design under the new web-address, and voila – a new scam is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the copy of the page you’ve started on. It makes uncovering such frauds pretty 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 Vastocea.online Scam