Spotting the scam “closing down” stores on Facebook

I’ve written about this sort of thing before, but I keep seeing many “closing down” sob-stories on Facebook, so though it time to write another post showing how to tell if a site really is legit or not.

The following site recently popped up on my Facebook feed :

Now, this one was of interest to me, as my other hobby aside from cyber-stuff is making models. But something really didn’t smell right about this one, so I started digging.

First thing I did was an image search via Google Lens which turned up the exact same photo on a Reddit post from 3 years ago – Red flag number 1

Next thing I did was to manually visit the URL – armyhobby.com – I do this to avoid sending my Facebook ID by clicking the link in the advert – The URL redirects to https://marijadraca.myshopify.com/ – Now this isn’t in itself an unusual thing for a URL to redirect you , but a shop which has bought a domain name would either use said domain name to host the site, or redirect to the same named shop on shopify – Red flag number 2.

A google lens image search throws up the biggest red flag (Red flag number 3):

The image of the shopkeeper is one taken 4 years ago of a legitimate model shop owner who was closing his family business down.

These things alone should convince most people that the site is a scam, but I wanted to see how many more red flags i could find, so it was time to dig a bit deeper – lets explore the site itself

At the bottom of the site are links to things such as Privacy policy, Contact details, Shipping policy, Refund policy, etc. These are trypically all good places to go hunting as usually they are either empty, or contain interesting data

In the case of the Privacy policy – its quite simply a boilerplate affair with the exception of some unusual contact details towards the bottom (who ever reads all the way to the bottom of documents like these?) – these details are copied onto the actual contact page too:

The email address is red flag number 4 – no business would use such a randomly generated gmail address

Researching the physical address returns a location in a residential street in Australia – hardly a place for a model shop! – Red flag number 5

Then we take a look at the phone number – According to a google search for the number – it doesnt exist, and the supposed dial code (02) is not an international dialing code – The number (02) is not an international country code but rather a geographic area code used for landline telephone numbers in the United Kingdom and also in France for its Northwest region. It is also the local area code for the region of Bangkok in Thailand, requiring the “02-” prefix for calls within the country. – Red flag number 6

Looking at the Refund policy, we see another boilerplate set of terms, but in this case, they forgot to add a fake returns address: Red flag number 7

Now lets get a bit technical – Lets examine the domain armyhobby.com by running a WHOIS lookup

A lookup on domaintools.com returns the following:

The site was registered 16 days ago (20-08-2025) – Red flag number 8

Although most WHOIS data nowadays is redacted for privacy (Thanks GDPR!) – not all the data is redacted in this case – apparently the registrant of the domain lives in Kalkofnsvegur 2, Reykjavik, Iceland. Red flag number 9

The phone number on the registry – +354.4212434 – Does actually exist – it points to a location in Reykjavik, but to one that is used by a business called Web3Bet – apparently they are an i-gaming & blockchain-focussed review platform. Red flag number 10

I think 10 red flags are enough to say for certain that this site is 100% a scam, and should not be given any money.

Its not always obvious that a site is a scam, but hopefully this post has shown what things to check so you can make your mind up whether to risk spending any money with one – If I find other examples, I’ll make more posts