Eater reports that, as of August 2022, over 1,000 customers have made purchases through fraudulent links to seafood “deals” from the luxury purveyor Regalis Foods — such as caviar, Maine lobster, and Alaskan crab legs — advertised on Facebook. Ian Purkayastha, who owns Regalis, estimates that scammers impersonating his website have brought in “more than $200,000” since popping up at the start of the year.
Now, there’s a post on the company’s Facebook page: “Scam sites imitating Regalis have been soliciting credit card information without fulfilling orders. Regalis DOES NOT accept payment via PayPal, so any website accepting PayPal is a scam.” Eater notes that some victims have called Regalis Foods with threats of violence regarding their unfilled orders, so hopefully this warning will inform those people and prevent future fraudsters from succeeding.
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Facebook scams are nothing new. According to a report from ProPublica, global scams across the network’s Facebook Marketplace “[revealed] how Facebook failed to safeguard users.” And oddly enough, seafood scams (not to be confused with seafood fraud) have also been an issue on Facebook since before the Regalis Foods fiasco. For instance, a 2021 post in Tech ARP warns Facebook users of fraudsters who “offer online seafood delivery at very attractive prices” on the social media platform and then “ghost” after obtaining victims’ bank info. Facebook allegedly…
