In the Scam of the day for March 5, 2025 I informed you that crafts supply store Joann Fabrics has filed for bankruptcy and would be closing all of its stores. Scammers were quick to take advantage of this by setting up phony Joann Fabrics websites offering tremendous discounts, but once you provide your credit card or debit card to make a purchase, you end up turning over your credit card or debit card to a scammer. The phony Joann Fabric websites are being touted on social media and the phony websites look quite legitimate, most likely due to the scammers using artificial intelligence to construct the websites. The only real Joann Fabric website is joann.com. The last 440 Joann Fabrics stores closed this week and online sales actaully ended on March 5th so any websites you may see offering discounted sales of Joann Fabrics merchandise are phony.
TIPS
In regard to buying anything online, look at the URL. If you are making a payment, you would want the URL to be preceded by https rather than merely http. The “s” means that your communication is being encrypted and while even some phony websites may go the extra step and use encryption, most do not and so this is an easy way to spot a scam. Also, never use your debit card for online shopping because the protection you get for fraudulent purchases is much less than when you use your credit card.
Sometimes carefully checking the domain name for a counterfeit website will provide an indication that it is a scam. If the domain name has nothing to do with the real name of the company, you can be confident that is a scam. I would caution you however that merely because the name looks legitimate does not mean that it is. Often scammers will create phony, but very legitimate appearing domain names.
You can also use
Whois.com which is a free service that will tell you who owns a particular URL and how long it has been in service. If your Walmart website has only been around six months and is owned by someone in Nigeria, it certainly is a scam. Here is a link to Whois
https://whois.domaintools.com/As for Joann Fabrics online sales, anything you see now is a fraud.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is sign up for free using this link.
https://scamicide.com/scam-of-the-day/
