Velika.club is a deceptive website that offers to purchase various goods at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is actually just a story 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 warning signs regarding the Velika.club shop, the way this deception operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping scams in future.
Velika.club Site – Scam Overview
As I said, Velika.club may initially look like a genuine discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a swift analysis shows a concerning amount of red flags that say clearly about this site’s fraudulence. Questionable advertising methods, extremely low prices, absence of customer support and customer reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.
| Website | Velika.club |
| Hosting | AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. Germany, Munich |
| IP Address | 188.114.97.3 |
| Threat Type | Scam/Fraud |
| Scam Type | Fraudulent/Scam online shop |
Velika.club Scam
By purchasing items on sites like Velika.club, it is improbable that you will acquire the goods you’ve ordered. More typically, 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 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 notably common case when ordering from pages that promote baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.
Wrong item. To make the purchase look more legitimate, but spend even less money on the actual item, frauds may send a accidental item they have instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a scratched aluminum platter instead of a set of dishes – frauds may turn quite inventive in that case.
Nothing at all. This is the most common scenario when ordering items from pages like Velika.club. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then simply vanish. As scams do not aim to exist for a long time, rascals are not wasting effort creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.
Velika.club scam – How does it work?
As any fraud, Velika.club follows a simple and well-proven modus operandi. It usually consists of 3 stages, with some slight deviations from time to time.
Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Scammers post massive amounts of advertisements on social media, 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 consider ads on the mentioned platforms benevolent, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly 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 website, scammers do their best to make the consumers buy something. Mind-boggling deals, additional discount promo codes, free delivery, 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 peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, scammers 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 scoundrels get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user reports regarding the site being fraudulent, they simply disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough people know about the dishonest activity, the money flow will dry up, leaving swindlers with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.
Why is Velika.club a Scam?
Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, scams 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 reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even legit online shopping sites will lack consumer comments shortly after the start, 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 unrealistic reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any obscure or drivel reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam 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, deceptive 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 sane limits.
3. No customer support.
That factor distinguishes dishonest websites from the benign ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the clients, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will 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 number to contact them, there is a great possibility that these numbers and emails will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.
As frauds often reuse numbers and emails for specifying them as “support”, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a different site, be sure that this is 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 plenty of benign shops and 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 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 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 real items, they are not able to make unique images. Thus their option is to steal these images from other sites. When rascals market identical goods on different pages, you can find same pics on similarly-looking scam sites. By searching for the image 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 stop on stealing photos. As rascals may parasite on the same topic again and again, they use the same site design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice I’ve mentioned above may lead you to the identical copy of the site you’ve started on. 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
