Facebook Marketplace Fake Shop Lure

Dec 8, 2021 Phishing Facebook Fake Shop

Currently my Desktop is without a graphics card, so I’m on the lookout for a modern, low power card. I happen to stumble across two similar posts on Facebook Marketplace for a Nivida Graphics Card with a compelling price tag… lets just say in todays market you won’t be finding these cheaper. Of course it was too good to be true as I suspected…

The Marketplace post

This scammer is using Facebook as a way to advertise their Fake Shops by luring people with bargain prices on in-demand products. By directing people away from Facebook they can avoid scrutiny from Facebook and ultimately con people into purchasing additional products via an online store rather than the typical meet and exchange (which they of course will never receive). They even say “I do not accept orders from FB” at the start of their post.

The front page of the shop looks like:

Typically fake shops are copies of each other and can be incomplete or have mistakes. There are quite a few mistake in this shop which a legitimate business would be unlikely to have.

Fake shop attributes

1. The “Home” button on the site does not link to the same site, instead it takes you to the domain weeklymalls[.]com which looks like a very similar shop with a different logic (which again looks wrong - maybe influxmall[.]com will become a shop in the future. From a quick Google search it looks like influxmall[.]store & influxmall[.]shop were previously a fake shop that has since been removed from the internet).

2. The “Shop” navigation button leads to a blank page.

3. In the FAQ they name another shop showing that it is in fact copied.

return/exchange policy
The sales of the challenmall[.]com online store are based on our excellent management and proven reliability, so the quality is guaranteed.

The following reasons are covered by FULL COVERAGE Return/Exchange Policy:
If we sent the wrong order or item(s), you received any broken items, the personalized info is different from you provided to challenmall[.]com, or the quality of the products you received is defective, please notify us immediately via e-mails and you will receive either a refund of your purchase or an exchange within 15 days.

This site looks a bit familiar ey

4. The social media links at the bottom right of the page are just for show. They do not lead to the shop’s profile but instead just to the base page of each networking site.

5. Only accepts one form of payment: PayPal

6. Those prices…! Too good!