Website Name
spikbuy.network
spikbuy.com
Website Type
Ecommerce Company
Is Spikbuy Fake or Real?
Likely Fake
Why is Spikbuy Likely Fake?
Spikbuy Limited is a company that operates the websites Spikbuy.com and Spikbuy.network. The websites are just a few months old and are being operated anonymously.
Spikbuy.com is an e-commerce website selling items from various categories such as computer electronics, fashion, health, home, sports, toys and more.
Curiously, the Alexa Rank (ie. website traffic) of Spikbuy has been steadily increasing but it seems that the people searching for Spikbuy.com actually intended to find Spikbuy.network. The site’s visitors are mainly from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt.
Spikbuy.network is an ‘investment opportunity’ that promises ‘passive income’ to investors with ROIs as high as 130% to 200% in an unspecified time period. Unless the duration for the ROI is 15 to 20 years, these kinds of profits are extremely unrealistic and unsustainable, which almost always is the first sign of a pyramid scheme.
There are a number of other signs that Spikbuy.com only exists to provide an illusion of authenticity for a fraudulent investment scheme. It is impossible to join Spikbuy without a referral code, which means that it is compulsory to join an existing investor’s downline.
There are a number of different packs that can be purchased ranging from $10 to $50,000 and members can only take part in the ‘Affiliate program’ by purchasing a package first.
In Spikbuy’s investor presentation, it is claimed that the money paid by investors are for ‘financing advertising campaigns’. The company apparently then pays a percentage of its profits to investors, which is not a business model that I am familiar with. The company claims that this is ‘crowdfunding’, but the term ‘crowdfunding’ is never associated with investment opportunities.
I found no evidence of Spikbuy ever advertising on Google or Facebook, which are two of the biggest and most popular online advertising platforms. This begs the question of where exactly Spikbuy is advertising and whether investors’ money is being used for the officially-stated purpose.
Spikbuy also has an ‘Infinity Bonus’ program that is structured very much like a classic pyramid scheme. It is a four-tiered referral bonus system that awards members whenever a member in their downline purchases a package.
The company information of Spikbuy is a bit shady too. The founder is supposedly a Belgian national named Dimitri Montalto. However, there is no information about Dimitri anywhere except in relation to Spikbuy.
Dimitri’s LinkedIn profile has no profile picture and all of Dimitri’s previous experience is with his own companies. It is likely that Dimitri is just a figurehead for a fake company and possibly doesn’t exist at all.
The company Spikbuy Limited is registered in the UK. However, this means next to nothing as registering a company in the UK is as easy as paying £12 and waiting 24 hours.
The company’s registered address is clearly a dummy as it is also being used by several other companies.
It does not seem that Spikbuy is a professional organization as even an important document like the Terms of Service contains glaring mistakes. The document mentions the non-existent site Spikbuynetwork.com instead of the actual URL which is Spikbuy.network.
Spikbuy doesn’t seem to be very popular. The Facebook and Instagram pages have barely 1,000 to 2,000 followers. However, the Telegram channel which is for discussing the investment part of the company has almost 4,000 members. It seems that Spikbuy has more ‘investors’ than they have actual customers.
There is no contact information given on the website itself, however, the Terms of Service document contains the below information. The phone number does not actually exist as far as I can tell. If you are in the UK, please call up the number to check and let me know what you find.
29. Contact us
Spikbuy Limited is a company incorporated in England. The address of our head office is Spikbuy LIMITED, 71-75 Shelton Street, WC2H 9JQ LONDON – ENGLAND. Our registered company number is 130 799 20 and the international DUNS number is 227.535.702.
There are few reviews available for Spikbuy and they are a mix of positive and negative reviews. Some say that they have earned from the platform while others have stated that their earnings went missing from their accounts.
It should be noted that any company that incentivizes recruitment of downlines has low credibility when it comes to reviews. Members have a financial incentive to say good things about the company so that new people join under them, making the original reviewer eligible for referral bonuses.
Conclusion
It seems quite likely that Spikbuy might be a pyramid scheme. The e-commerce website seems to exist only as a facade to hide the potentially fraudulent scheme that is operating behind the scenes.
Spikbuy is a new website that is less than a year old and is operated anonymously. There is no information about the founder Dimitri Montalto and his LinkedIn profile does not even have a display image.
The company information is even more dubious as it is registered in the UK even though Dimitri is supposedly Belgian. Companies registered in the UK are notorious for being used as shell companies and there is reason to believe that this may be the case with Spikbuy Limited too. The registration address provided is also being used by numerous other companies and there is no evidence that Spikbuy is actually located there.
Spikbuy is selling packages to ‘investors’ that supposedly fund the advertising for the ecommerce website. However, there is no data about Spikbuy running any ads on the most popular platforms like Google and Facebook. The e-commerce website gets very little traffic and the social media pages have low follower counts. The numbers suggest that Spikbuy may have more investors than it has customers.
Despite the e-commerce website not appearing to be lucrative, Spikbuy is promising returns of 130% to 200%. Members can earn even more than that by recruiting others to purchase packages.
It is impossible to enter the program unless you have the referral link of an existing member, which means that it is compulsory to join a downline. There is a four-tier referral commission system that awards members a percentage commission for each package purchased by their referrals. All of these are the classic signs of a pyramid scheme.
It is advisable to avoid investing in Spikbuy, as the signs indicate a fair possibility that it might be a fraudulent investment scheme. Pyramid schemes use funds from deposits of new members to pay returns to old members.
Such schemes are illegal everywhere and most investors end up losing money. They are highly unsustainable as the scheme will start collapsing when the number of new investors reduces, at which point the owners of the company might pull an exit scam.
How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam
Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
To read about other Investment Scams, click here.
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If you have been a victim of an investment scam, you can take the following steps:
- File a complaint with the payment portal. However, investment scammers mostly use methods such as Bitcoin, Western Union, MoneyGram and other untraceable methods which make refunds impossible.
- File a formal police complaint with the Cybercrime department.
- Leave a negative review on review portals such as Scamadviser and TrustPilot
- Report the website to Google using the Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome
- Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same.
- If the company has a listing on Google My Business or Google Maps, file a complaint using the Business Redressal Complaint Form. Also, leave a negative review explaining what kind of experience you had.
- Report the scam site to web filtering companies.
Disclaimer: This review is intended for information only and should not be relied on when making financial or business decisions. If you are a website owner and would like to provide clarifications regarding your business and/or website, please get in touch using the Contact Form.