Don’t be fooled by online gun scams
This holiday season, shop smart when you shop online
December 22, 2022 10:30 am
With Christmas in our rural community, many of you are probably hoping to find a firearm under the tree (rather than a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun). However, if you are planning to shop online, beware! Scams abound and one of the biggest in the gun industry is fake online gun shops. I’m a professional fraud investigator and almost fell for one while looking for a firearm.
The red flag that stopped me was when I tried to pay, no transaction took place. I received an email from the store owner asking me to pay with cell or bitcoin. After further research, I found that the website was fraudulent. I decided to spend some time researching fake gun and ammo deals and discovered dozens of them, all of which appeared legitimate unless you dug deeper.
What makes an online gun or ammo store fake? The first red flag is that they have to pay with Cell, Venmo, cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Doge, Ethereum, etc.) or Applepay. None of these payment methods have any way of getting your money back after sending, making them perfect for scammers.
The second red flag was finding guns that are hard to find or far below normal MSRP (or even wholesale cost). If you’re looking for that particular gun and the prices are high (search Gunbroker.com to see what people are paying or have paid for), something is wrong when you find them wholesale (or less).
The third red flag was the lack of a phone number or physical address on the website. Sometimes a phone number is given, but it’s usually unconnected, has an incorrect area code, or can be found on several other websites (e.g., a gun store had the same number as a railroad in another state and a cannabis store). . They sometimes say “toll free” but have a normal area code in the number.
The stores that had a physical address on their website listed either a residential address (in an area that didn’t match the phone number’s area code), a PO box store (e.g. Mail Express), or even the address of a real gun shop. The last one had the same name and address as the legitimate store, but the lesson ended when I saw that they only accepted cell and cryptocurrency. Some of the fake stores even shared the same fake address.
Another red flag was stores that sold machine guns.
These fake websites usually use the real gun manufacturers’ logos and names to make them appear legitimate.
If you are buying a gun online, double check the store and never, ever, ever pay with cell, venmo, bank transfer, debit card or cryptocurrency.
A note on buying firearms online – this is perfectly legal, but the firearm must be shipped to a state firearms license holder and you must go through the same background check as when buying in a store. There is no “loophole for selling guns online”.
James Peet
enum claw
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