How to know if a website is fake and will steal your money?

[Markie]

I've recently tried to order a juicy tracksuit from gogocheapjc.net and they took all my information and then said they would contact me within 24 hours so I could buy it. They did not take my credit card information so they can't steal my money but I was wondering if they would if I gave it to them. Has anyone ordered from this site before and received what they ordered?

[Zorro]

Probably a scam place.

[falsi fiable]

If it's too good to be true, it likely is.
Make all your purchases with a genuine credit card, not a debit card or electronic check or PayPal. If something goes wrong, your purchase is protected by the credit card member agreement. For any questionable merchant, use a virtual account number that you can generate at your card issuer's website. That prevents the merchant from billing you a second time or more than the limit you specify. It's easy!

[A Hunch]

Use a credit card - not paypal, echeck or debit card
= that's because of the extra protection that comes with credit cards.

Make sure the website starts with https:// on the page that you enter your credit card infomation.
Look for a reputable SSL certification and payment gateway.
If the site does not display this information, it's probably not as legit.

An SSL certificate is a certificate that proves your credit card information is secure when it's sent over the internet.
A payment gateway is the software that passes your credit card information to the bank

[Jake]

Your review of a site should start with the domain name registration whois information which generally reveals the location of the owner and the creation date of the site. Some use a paid "privacy" registration proxy to conceal the real owner information, some Chinese sites just fabricate a hokey U.S. address sometimes with a +86 Chinese phone number. Use a tool like this:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

The news it's a 5 week old site registered to a Chinese address, SCARY, at least they seem to supply a complete address like some who don't want to be tracked down.

Searching for the email address used in the registration can turn up report of other sites they own.

They are reported to also own these sites (not a good sign):
watchessells.com
fakeedhardysale.org
hollisteroutletshopping.org
hollisteroutletshop.org
cheapjchandbags.org
cheapjchandbagsales.org
winpolooutlet.net
bikiniwto.com
clothingbanks.com
winpolooutlet.org
information on these sites may help track them down, or at least give you more to expose if you have to settle for the satisfaction of reporting them to the various scam site lists.

You can also find legal papers filed against them by ABERCROMBIE & FITCH TRADING CO.

Next you would search for other dissatisfied user reports, a brand new site under 3 months old may not be broadly reported.
Search for: "gogocheapjc.net" scam
Nothing jumped out in several pages of results.

[Lazy-assedhome762]

100% scam.

That is a fake website pretending to sell cheap merchandise.

Any site that advertises merchandise cheaper than the official manufacture's website is a fake site shipping gosh awful crappy knock-offs or simply collecting cash and not even bothering to ship fakes.

The pictures on the site look like the real merchandise because those pictures ARE of the official merchandise. Those pictures were stolen from the official manufacture's website. If you receive anything at all, which is doubtful, it will not resemble those pretty pictures at all.

The payment options say it all, Western Union, moneygram, paypal and bank transfer, only anonymous cash payments.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Paypal can only get your money back if there is money left in the scammer's paypal linked bank account. Scammers know this and will withdraw your money immediately, no money in the account means no possibility of refund for you.

Your bank can only get your money back if there is money left in the scammer's bank account. Scammers know this and will immediately withdrawal the money you transferred. No money in the account means absolutely no possibility of you getting your hard-earned cash back.

In all seriousness, when something goes wrong, what will you do? Send an email that is ignored and blocked? Send chat requests until you are ip banned? Call internationally and speak fluent Chinese?

The UPS, TNT and DHL icons are there only to take up space, that site only ships with EMS, the Chinese post office, good luck getting the "tracking number" they give you to work on the EMS website. You will need even more luck trying to contact EMS when your tracking stops and your "package" is lost somewhere.

You could then be really lucky, your "package" is discovered, seized by "customs" and all you need to do is pay even more money via Western Union or moneygram to the "custom's official" who uses a free email address just like that site has a free email address as its contact information.

Free email addresses are easy to open and close completely anonymously.