What amazes me is the amount of work they put into that website. It looks totally legit, the pictures and info looks like any other real website that sells plants online. I just don't understand how they can keep this going and not get caught.
All they need is one credit card number and they get their investment back. They are most likely offshore, probably Asia or Eastern Europe. Well beyond the reach of domestic U.S. law enforcement. They are very hard to find, much less prosecute--some nations actively harbor cybercriminals who do double duty with those nations' cyber espionage operations (hello Russia). The multiplying bogus sites are part of a very large international cyber problem. Some crooks are part of larger rings, some (if not most) are using "Software as a service" applications created for such activity. That takes the technical and programming work out of setting up sites. It costs literally dozens of dollars to do it. Returns on that low investment are extremely high.
Take a look at the vendors list here, or do a search on a vendor's name here. Don't trust any that aren't consistently mentioned favorably.
FWIW, I noticed another one of these kinds of murky sites actually soliciting here. Same M.O.--nonexistent street address, additional web sites tied to it for unrelated markets, photos of finished bonsai stolen from legitimate sources (hello, Walter Pall--seems he has become a go-to for scammers for stealing photos of excellent bonsai). I reported the site to the 'nut using the "report" button on the post. Do the same if you see suspicious posts here. Scammers are everywhere and increasingly deceptive. If you have trouble finding a physical address on a site, or find one that doesn't come up in a search, be very very careful.
And BTW, they DO catch some of this scum but there is soooo much of it...https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/05/fbi_seizes_stolen_data_mart/
www.rootspldeals.com
