Beware of LEGO Scams on Facebook: Exposing the Winburnev[.]com Hoax

Are you a LEGO lover?Recognized dealers Don’t get too excited when you come across those too-good-to-be-true deals on Facebook – it could be a SCAM! Recently there have been lots of Facebook ads promoting LEGO sales and clearance events that lead to winburnev[.]com. Don’t proceed! It’s NOT legitimate. Keep reading for the full breakdown.

Fake LEGO Christmas sales

There are tons of suspicious ads on Facebook; we’ve been reporting on them for months. Recently we’ve seen a wave of fake LEGO sales campaigns promoting the sketchy online shop, winburnev[.]com. In fact, there are around 1,200 ads on Facebook related to this bogus website. Below are some examples.

Besides random page names like “Toy Store,” scammers also impersonate trusted brands, such as Macy’s, to try to trick people into clicking.

Sample content of these winburnev[.]com scam LEGO ads:

• 🔥LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RIVENDELL™ Collection, Limited time clearance event On sale today for only 💰$19.30 📦28 left in stock
• 🔥LEGO Hogwarts™ Castle Collection, Christmas Sale On sale today for only 💰$18.87 📦28 left in stock
• 🔥LEGO Titanic Collection, Christmas Sale On sale today for only 💰$19.30 📦28 left in stock

Winburnev[.]com Scam

Interestingly, although its ads all seem to mention LEGO products, winburnev[.] appears to be selling women’s clothing.

Scam LEGO website – Winburnev[.]com

Scam Site Red Flags

Here’s a list of some common giveaways that a site isn’t trustworthy:

• A copycat web address. Search on Google for the official one and compare.
• Too-good-to-be-true deals.
• A very recent site registration date — you can check a site’s age quickly using Whois lookup. For example, winburnev[.]com was created less than one month ago:

Source: Whois

• A bad reputation. Check the verdict our website FTI — winburnev[.]com has a Trustscore rating of just 1 out of 100, for example:

Source: FTI

• A lack of customer reviews or only lots of 5-star ones.
• Suspicious Facebook page transparency info. You can check a page’s transparency info to see if it was recently created or if the page content was recently changed. 

We recommend you avoid interacting withwinburnev[.]com and any of its related Facebook ads or pages. Always shop on the official site (lego.com) or trusted platforms to stay protected!

Shop Safely Online

The truth is, there are lots of scams and scam sites on the internet and they’re getting even more difficult to detect with common sense alone. However, for an easy and reliable method of detecting and avoiding scam sites, check out Trend Micro ID Protection (for free!).         
 
ID Protection can shield you from scams, fake and malware-infected websites, dangerous emails, phishing links, and lots more! If you come across something risky online, you’ll be alerted in real-time so you’ll know to stay well clear. 

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This article is published in collaboration with Trend Micro