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When Anne moved to a new apartment in April 2020, she had a hard time shopping for furniture due to Covid-19 closures. So she clicked on a Facebook advertisement for home decor items in the hopes of filling her home with something in the meantime.
“I might be sitting on the floor, but I can have this cute serving tray,” recalled Anne, who lives in Maryland and is in her late 30s. She asked us not to use her last name for privacy reasons.
She waited to receive the tray and a small lamp by mail, but the package never came. She was out $65.
Anne emailed the home decor company, Modernly Decor, three times to ask about her order.
“Eventually I was looking at the contact information on their website and noticed the domain of the email address was slightly different than the name of the store,” Anne says. Soon, she discovered reviews on the Better Business Bureau website saying the online store was a scam.
She’s just one of many online shoppers who were lured in by an attractive social media post only to be duped into placing an order with a store that doesn’t exist. This type of fraud has increased in recent years, especially during the pandemic, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Last year, the FTC received 43,000 complaints about online shopping scams that started on social…
