The official limited edition Jo Malone advent calendar retails for £350 and includes lotions, perfume, toiletries and candles.
This popular product launched at the end of September and scammers were unsurprisingly quick to imitate the brand with fraudulent adverts across Facebook.
Read on to see how this scam works and how to avoid falling for it.
Jo Malone Facebook scam
The scam ads claim to be selling the advent calendar for a ridiculously low price of £30. One ad we saw included a promotional video of a customer unwrapping the calendar, which appears to be taken from the official Jo Malone adverts also circulating on Facebook.
Clues to look out for in these scam adverts are the bad spelling and grammar, and that the sellers use a random profile name unrelated to the Jo Malone brand.
We have reported all the scam adverts to Facebook.
Scam shopping websites
Some of the adverts we found led to malicious websites phishing for personal details.
The scam sites include a countdown timer and notifications about purchases in ‘real time’, and list the number of advent calendars in stock. These are typical tactics used to make victims act under pressure, without taking the time to verify the authenticity of the information.
The URLs of the seven scam websites we found are:
The websites also featured a lengthy product description, designed to appear genuine, and led to a payment page asking for name, address, email address, phone number and financial details.
We shared our findings with Jo Malone. The company told us: ‘This is not an authorised Jo Malone London offer. The only way to ensure that the products consumers purchase are authentic and safe is to purchase only from our authorised online or in-store retailers or directly from Jo Malone London. Lists of authorised retailers can be found on jomalone.co.uk'.
Avoiding and reporting shopping scams
If an offer is too good to be true, the chances are it is. Watch out for any high-end or in-demand items being flogged at low prices.
Here are a few more tips to avoid shopping scams:
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/fraudsters-target-facebook-users-with-new-jo-malone-advent-calendar-scam-aFVn70x5oJ9a