{"id":13298,"date":"2021-09-01T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/blog\/?p=13298"},"modified":"2026-01-21T13:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:32:12","slug":"investigating-a-fake-website-how-to-tell-that-a-website-is-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.socialcatfish.cloud\/scamfish\/investigating-a-fake-website-how-to-tell-that-a-website-is-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigating a Fake Website: How to Tell That a Website is Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Social Catfish, we investigate a fake cryptocurrency website<\/a> that was used to scam Patty in the previous episode. We log into her account<\/a> and take a look at what made Patty suspicious about this website. We noticed that she couldn’t take money out and also realized that while stocks were going down, her investment was still going up! This is highly unusual and led us to suspect that this website might be fake.<\/a> We took a deeper look into the structure of the website to see what other clues we can gather when investigating a fake website.<\/p>\n[aesop_video src=”youtube” id=”baC-VYQc_M4″ width=”100%” align=”center” disable_for_mobile=”off” loop=”off” controls=”on” mute=”off” autoplay=”off” viewstart=”off” viewend=”off” show_subtitles=”off” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

Catfish Cases: Investigating a Fake Website<\/h2>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Catfish-Cases-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

When looking at a website to determine whether it’s fake or not, we wanted to take a look at a few things to verify. While a website may seem legit with how cool it looks, scammers usually mess up on the little details and the back end of the website. At Social Catfish<\/a>, we took a look at these little details that many people might have missed to prove that this website is indeed fake.<\/p>\n

Patty’s Account Looked Suspicious<\/h3>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Analyzing-Pattys-Account.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

When we were investigating Patty’s account we immediately saw two things that looked out of place. The first thing we noticed is that her account balance was showing how much money she had in US Dollars, but it wasn’t showing how much Bitcoin she had. With Bitcoin investments, the website will show you how much Bitcoin you have instead of the US dollar amount.<\/p>\n

The second thing we noticed on this website was that the stocks were decreasing which meant that Patty’s investments should’ve decreased too. Instead, they were showing to increase a steady amount of $500 a day. Investments are usually not steadily increasing like that, especially when the stock market is decreasing in value. Therefore, these signs led us to believe that this website is fake.<\/p>\n

Patty Has to Pay to Withdrawal Her Funds<\/h3>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Patty-Cant-Make-Withdrawals.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

With Patty’s permission, we tried to make a withdrawal in Patty’s account<\/a> to see what would happen. When we attempted, it said there was an error on the website and stated we needed to pay $60,000 in order to get a hold of Patty’s money.<\/p>\n

A legit investment website would never make you pay to withdrawal your money from your account. This can easily be defined as a scammer tactic<\/a> since the scammer is coming up with an excuse in order to get his hands on a large sum of money.<\/p>\n

The Template Used For This Website Was Stolen<\/h3>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Source-Code-2.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

First, we looked into the source code used within the website to see if there was any information we needed to know it. We saw that there was a URL to another website embedded into the website, so we decided to take a look at it. We noticed that they were using the same website template as the scam website<\/a>, concluding that they have stolen it from this website.<\/p>\n

We then did some further research to figure out where this template might have come from. We found a website that sells templates for other websites called ProInvest, so we decided to see what templates they were selling.<\/a> That’s when we noticed that we found the same template used on the scam website on sale for $72. This means that scammers can purchase this template at a cheap price to create websites easier and scam victims out of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

There Were No Terms and Conditions Listed For This Fake Website<\/h3>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Terms-and-Conditions-2.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n

We looked through the meta code that was embedded in this website. This is another way we can look up information within a website using HTML codes. After searching for terms and conditions within the meta code, we found that there was no information listed under this tab.<\/p>\n

This concluded that this website does not have any terms and conditions written which would therefore make it a fake business<\/a>. This is due to the fact that all legit businesses have terms and conditions written to protect their business from any legal issues. With no protection, we can conclude that this is a fake investment company.<\/p>\n

Investigating a Fake Website: How to Avoid Fake Websites<\/h2>\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/socialcatfish.com\/scamfish\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/pexels-burst-374016.jpg” panorama=”off” imgwidth=”100%” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionsrc=”custom” captionposition=”center” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n