The cruelest online scam is the one that imitates the safety mechanism. "Bogus escrow" is common enough to have its own Wikipedia entry: the seller agrees to use escrow, helpfully sends you a link, and the professional-looking site that opens is theirs. Here is how the scam works and how to defeat it in minutes.
How the bogus escrow scam works
You find a deal: a car, a domain, a high-value item at a good price. The seller says all the right things about safety and suggests an escrow service, sending you a link. The site has a clean design, an SSL padlock, and a payment page. You "deposit into escrow" and both the seller and the website evaporate. The site was built for exactly this, often cloned from a real escrow service, and it will be rebuilt under a new domain next week.
Nine checks that expose a fake escrow site
- Who suggested it? If the counterparty gave you the link, treat the site as fake until proven otherwise. This single question defeats most bogus escrow scams.
- Check the domain carefully. Lookalike spellings, extra words ("escrow-secure-payments"), and unusual endings are standard. Type the domain of a service you know rather than clicking anything.
- Look for a published fee schedule. Real escrow services publish exact fees before you commit. Fakes are vague because the "fee" is everything you send.
- Verify the corporate entity and registry. A genuine escrow service publishes its registered legal entity name, corporate jurisdiction, physical office, and reachable telephone support. Fakes rely on anonymous identities or throwaway contact forms.
- Read the dispute policy. A real service explains in writing how disputes are decided and how refunds happen. No dispute page means no protection.
- Test the support channel. Send a question or call before sending money. A real operator answers; a fake usually has a dead contact form.
- Check the payment instructions. A real crypto escrow assigns a transaction-specific deposit address inside your logged-in account, with a reference number. A fake asks you to send coins to a bare wallet address from an email.
- Look up the domain age. A "trusted since 2015" site registered three weeks ago is a fake. WHOIS lookups are free.
- Watch for urgency. "The deal expires today" exists to stop you from doing the checks above.
The one rule that beats the scam
Choose the escrow service yourself, and make the other party come to it. A scammer can fake a website, but they cannot fake the service you independently navigated to. A legitimate counterparty has no reason to object, because a real escrow protects them too. If they push back and insist on their link, you have learned what you needed to know for free.
Want to see what the real thing looks like? Read how our escrow process works, review our corporate identity and compliance team on our About Us page, and check the published fee schedule: the trust foundations every legitimate escrow maintains.