scammers are alive and well...and living in the web

crowtalks · November 4, 2021, 10:32 PM

Last evening I started looking for large pistol primers (a year too late) and I was very pleased to find a retailer that had some at a decent price. The retailer required a minimum purchase of $250, but with primers and powder available, I was OK with that. One thing odd I noticed was they only accept zello and a couple other services similar.

I decided to call them and found that the number listed on their site was bogus.

This threw up red flags and I searched for primers again and found four or five similar sites with in-stock primer and powder at decent prices...all used similar web engines and all required similar payment forms.

I received an email from Primers1 where I had placed the order and the email came from a very odd domain.

Watch out for scammers that want to take your money and deliver nothing but air.

Jim

**44 AMP** · November 4, 2021, 11:30 PM

Anyone who won't take cash, USPS money order, bank cashier's check or standard credit cards is someone you should not deal with. Not if you actually expect to get what you are paying them for...

At least, in my opinion...

higgite · November 5, 2021, 01:15 AM

Primers1.com shares their phone number with goldammo.org, which is another website that is under suspicion in another thread. Just saying.

**Unclenick** · November 5, 2021, 01:31 PM

Yep. Lots of these guys out there now. I can only recommend sticking with brand names you know for mailorder purchasing, and of course the brick and mortar stores in your area. Report the scam sites to authorities as suspicious. Usually, the BBB ratings will back you up on that.

Seedy Character · November 5, 2021, 05:40 PM

1 a legitimate retailer takes credit cards
2 use companies you know or have been recommended, by people you know

Double Naught Spy · November 6, 2021, 09:14 AM

Quote:

1 a legitimate retailer takes credit cards

But everybody wants the best deal possible and we all know there is somebody out there that hoarded bazillions of primers or powder or brass who is now wanting to make a deal to unload it, LOL.

**Unclenick** · November 6, 2021, 10:20 AM

You'd do best to find the private sellers at the local gun show.

caligula · December 31, 2021, 04:40 AM

Thanks, guys! I just had this same experience and decided to mine intel from here. There seems to be two different source worlds out there. One world wants $70.00 for a brick of primers and the other world wants $32.00 for a brick of primers. This latter one is the one with the flaky credentials and exactly the same payment theatrics. The reason I got suspicious was because I absolutely hate it when someone makes it hard to give them money.

Again, thank you for the intel -

cdoc42 · December 31, 2021, 02:49 PM

Crowtalks and Caligula, here is a similar experience I had posted on the first thread in this forum, "Component Sightings." You might find it useful to review the posts therein.

"BEWARE. I came across a website based in Alaska called Raniersec.com. Prices are really an eye opener. Hornady 7mm ELD-X for $24.91 a box of 100; Winchester Shotgun shells for $4.95/25. Whole ton of various stuff. Nice photo of the building. Won't accept personal credit cards,only Bitcoin or Vanilla and Amazon Gift cards. Checked it out on scam reviewers and it IS a scam. "Customers" gave it a 100% poor rating. One spent $1500 in bitcoin and received zero goods. Another used a gift card and an hour later saw the thing drop to zero with unrelated purchases. Turns out the building photo is from a legitimate but unrelated place in Utah."

ghbucky · December 31, 2021, 03:06 PM

For the life of me I do NOT understand why people persist in being scammed when avoiding them is so simple.

Any [SELLER] who will not accept forms of payments that are via some form of broker or traceable transaction is trying to steal from you.

It is simple folks. For the love of pete, stop supporting these thieves.

[edit] changed buyer to SELLER

FrankenMauser · December 31, 2021, 04:02 PM

People are dumb.
I know someone that got scammed on $6,500 worth of primers and ammo about a year ago. Same deal. Sketchy website, bad contact methods, payment only in something unusual or unprotected. He paid with bitcoin.

I will say, however, that not all businesses that refuse to take credit cards are scams.
A big player in the reproduction SMLE market has just gone to Venmo-only. He had too many problems with his credit card processor, as well as bad checks and fake money orders, and just said 'screw it'.

I also know of two gunsmiths that get a lot of talk and business on the interwebs, who have gone to cashapp for all payments. Scares a lot of people off.

However, we know these people are legit, and their names can be verified in 2 minutes.

(For anyone still unaware, Venmo is Paypal. Don't believe what the idiots tell you. It's the same company.)

Mike38 · December 31, 2021, 05:14 PM

About 3 days ago I did my weekly search for Winchester pistol primers, large and small. Ran across winchesterprimers.com. $70 per brick. I put 3 small and 3 large bricks in the cart and went to checkout. Payment options were Venmo, Bitcoin or Cashapp. No credit or debit cards. Nope, I'm outa here.

**Unclenick** · December 31, 2021, 06:04 PM

That's a good point. The Internet is changing the nature of all commerce.

ghbucky · December 31, 2021, 08:10 PM

Quote:

Ran across winchesterprimers.com. $70 per brick. I put 3 small and 3 large bricks in the cart and went to checkout. Payment options were Venmo, Bitcoin or Cashapp. No credit or debit cards. Nope, I'm outa here.

Good choice.

Let's talk a bit about how domain names work and why winchesterprimers.com should have given the scam away without ever clicking that link.

The fully qualified domain name is an internet address, and they read right to left in specificity. We typically see '.com' or '.net' followed by a slash. Anything to the right of the 3rd slash in the address is a pointer to specific page that your address is trying to find. To the left of the 3rd slash will be the 'domain suffix', which can also can tell you where the domain should be located.

More on domain suffixes here: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/num/domains.htm

'.com' is the commercial suffix for US domains.

Moving left in the address you get the actual domain name. In the link above that domain is computerhope.

Some entity owns the name computerhope.com (which is not the same as say, computerhope.net). Many tech savvy companies will grab up a lot of their product name and domain permutations and re-direct them to their main domain (try going to apple.net for example, you will end up on apple.com. They also own iphone.com)

If you want to know who owns a domain you can do a public record search at https://lookup.icann.org/lookup to see who the registrar (this is a service that lets the WWW know what IP address is associated with a domains) and registrant (this is who handles registering a domain name) is. (Many companies will contract this type of work to vendors). If we punch in winchester.com we see that the registrar is a Canadian company called Contact Privacy Inc. There is also a contact email address and phone number.

Note, there are commercial whois.net and whois.com sites that can also provide this info but they run advertisements and try to sell you stuff. ICANN is the where they are retrieving info.

Winchester.com's registrant is TUCOWS. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucows)

There is another trick a domain can use to direct incoming traffic and segment as they would like, and that is to add another apparent domain name in front of their actual domain (say, iphone.apple.com). Your browser will read that as looking for a website at apple.com titled iphone.

So, if for example, Winchester wanted to specifically sell primers on its own website, they could simply publish primers.winchester.com. This would be a separate website hosted on their servers, but they wouldn't need to register a new domain.

Going to primers.winchester.com results in an error. Because Winchester's servers are not hosting a website called primers.winchester.com.

Going back to the icann lookup link, let's punch in winchesterprimers.com

hmmm...

Registrant:
Kind: individual
Mailing Address: douala, CM <----- that looks a bit suspicious, eh?

What is Douala, CM? Oh, that is Douala, Cameroon!

Going down a bit on that page you find the Registrar information, and again, it is good ol' TUCOWS. There is also an 'abuse contact email'. Which I will be making use of in this case.

Hope this helps someone.

November 4, 2021, 10:32 PM	#1
crowtalks Member Join Date: November 17, 2017 Location: Tennessee Posts: 16	scammers are alive and well...and living in the web Last evening I started looking for large pistol primers (a year too late) and I was very pleased to find a retailer that had some at a decent price. The retailer required a minimum purchase of $250, but with primers and powder available, I was OK with that. One thing odd I noticed was they only accept zello and a couple other services similar. I decided to call them and found that the number listed on their site was bogus. This threw up red flags and I searched for primers again and found four or five similar sites with in-stock primer and powder at decent prices...all used similar web engines and all required similar payment forms. I received an email from Primers1 where I had placed the order and the email came from a very odd domain. Watch out for scammers that want to take your money and deliver nothing but air. Jim

November 4, 2021, 11:30 PM	#2
44 AMP Staff Join Date: March 11, 2006 Location: Upper US Posts: 28,846	Anyone who won't take cash, USPS money order, bank cashier's check or standard credit cards is someone you should not deal with. Not if you actually expect to get what you are paying them for... At least, in my opinion... __________________ All else being equal (and it almost never is) bigger bullets tend to work better.

November 5, 2021, 01:31 PM	#4
Unclenick Staff Join Date: March 4, 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 21,063	Yep. Lots of these guys out there now. I can only recommend sticking with brand names you know for mailorder purchasing, and of course the brick and mortar stores in your area. Report the scam sites to authorities as suspicious. Usually, the BBB ratings will back you up on that. __________________ Gunsite Orange Hat Family Member CMP Certified GSM Master Instructor NRA Certified Rifle Instructor NRA Benefactor Member and Golden Eagle

November 6, 2021, 10:20 AM	#7
Unclenick Staff Join Date: March 4, 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 21,063	You'd do best to find the private sellers at the local gun show. __________________ Gunsite Orange Hat Family Member CMP Certified GSM Master Instructor NRA Certified Rifle Instructor NRA Benefactor Member and Golden Eagle

December 31, 2021, 04:40 AM	#8
caligula Member Join Date: November 1, 2017 Posts: 42	SCAMMERS Thanks, guys! I just had this same experience and decided to mine intel from here. There seems to be two different source worlds out there. One world wants $70.00 for a brick of primers and the other world wants $32.00 for a brick of primers. This latter one is the one with the flaky credentials and exactly the same payment theatrics. The reason I got suspicious was because I absolutely hate it when someone makes it hard to give them money. Again, thank you for the intel -

November 5, 2021, 01:15 AM	#3
higgite Senior Member Join Date: October 21, 2010 Posts: 1,025	Primers1.com shares their phone number with goldammo.org, which is another website that is under suspicion in another thread. Just saying.

November 5, 2021, 05:40 PM	#5
Seedy Character Senior Member Join Date: July 5, 2021 Location: SW Okla Posts: 201	1 a legitimate retailer takes credit cards 2 use companies you know or have been recommended, by people you know

December 31, 2021, 02:49 PM	#9
cdoc42 Senior Member Join Date: March 13, 2005 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 1,687	Crowtalks and Caligula, here is a similar experience I had posted on the first thread in this forum, "Component Sightings." You might find it useful to review the posts therein. "BEWARE. I came across a website based in Alaska called Raniersec.com. Prices are really an eye opener. Hornady 7mm ELD-X for $24.91 a box of 100; Winchester Shotgun shells for $4.95/25. Whole ton of various stuff. Nice photo of the building. Won't accept personal credit cards,only Bitcoin or Vanilla and Amazon Gift cards. Checked it out on scam reviewers and it IS a scam. "Customers" gave it a 100% poor rating. One spent $1500 in bitcoin and received zero goods. Another used a gift card and an hour later saw the thing drop to zero with unrelated purchases. Turns out the building photo is from a legitimate but unrelated place in Utah."

December 31, 2021, 03:06 PM	#10
ghbucky Senior Member Join Date: June 12, 2020 Posts: 1,177	For the life of me I do NOT understand why people persist in being scammed when avoiding them is so simple. Any [SELLER] who will not accept forms of payments that are via some form of broker or traceable transaction is trying to steal from you. It is simple folks. For the love of pete, stop supporting these thieves. [edit] changed buyer to SELLER Last edited by ghbucky; December 31, 2021 at 07:20 PM.

December 31, 2021, 04:02 PM	#11
FrankenMauser Senior Member Join Date: August 25, 2008 Location: In the valley above the plain Posts: 13,424	People are dumb. I know someone that got scammed on $6,500 worth of primers and ammo about a year ago. Same deal. Sketchy website, bad contact methods, payment only in something unusual or unprotected. He paid with bitcoin. I will say, however, that not all businesses that refuse to take credit cards are scams. A big player in the reproduction SMLE market has just gone to Venmo-only. He had too many problems with his credit card processor, as well as bad checks and fake money orders, and just said 'screw it'. I also know of two gunsmiths that get a lot of talk and business on the interwebs, who have gone to cashapp for all payments. Scares a lot of people off. However, we know these people are legit, and their names can be verified in 2 minutes. (For anyone still unaware, Venmo is Paypal. Don't believe what the idiots tell you. It's the same company.) __________________ Don't even try it. It's even worse than the internet would lead you to believe.

December 31, 2021, 05:14 PM	#12
Mike38 Senior Member Join Date: December 28, 2009 Location: North Central Illinois Posts: 2,710	About 3 days ago I did my weekly search for Winchester pistol primers, large and small. Ran across winchesterprimers.com. $70 per brick. I put 3 small and 3 large bricks in the cart and went to checkout. Payment options were Venmo, Bitcoin or Cashapp. No credit or debit cards. Nope, I'm outa here.

December 31, 2021, 06:04 PM	#13
Unclenick Staff Join Date: March 4, 2005 Location: Ohio Posts: 21,063	That's a good point. The Internet is changing the nature of all commerce. __________________ Gunsite Orange Hat Family Member CMP Certified GSM Master Instructor NRA Certified Rifle Instructor NRA Benefactor Member and Golden Eagle