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Hello, this page is to warn that the site currently hosted at the URL "mangoflights.com" is a sofisticated fake flight agency scam, selling bogus flight tickets.
But before entering into the details of the scam, let's precise that the scammer plays with the names, trying to confuse you. "Mango Tours" (https://www.mangotours.com/) or "Mango airlines" (https://www.flymango.com/) are legit different business.
This notice refers to the fake web flight agency currently (because, we'll see, they change name every a while..) at site "mangoflights.com".
How the scam work ?
How the scam work ?
The scammer advertises on social networks (we know for sure Facebook), promising very cheap fares.
The site is connected to a flight database, so it shows actual real flights, their timetable, the airline company...
It allows you to "buy" the ticket, enter your data, etc, like a real flight agency site, in a very realistic manner.
However, at time of paying, it will tell you that the credit card isn't working and propose you to make a bank transfer to a Lithuanian bank account.
[EDIT: this can change.. they are really wise and change bank quickly. I have reports for example of a Swedish bank being used]
At that time your money is gonna. Although the site sends you a confirmation email and try to keep you convinced you have a valid ticket, using a fake "customer service", in reality you just got fresh air, your flight ticket simply doesn't exist and will never do (forget the 180 days refund in their terms and condition, that's just to give them enough time to squeeze all what they can from the name they use before moving to a new domain name).
IATA (the airline international organisation) classify this scam as "fake travel sites":
The IATA accreditation code
The IATA accreditation code
IATA demands to all agents selling tickets on behalf of an airline to be accredited and show their unique code.
The scammer at mangoflights.com claimed accreditation code is 1946208. In a wise manner, the scammer avoids to specifically name it as the "IATA" accreditation code, to leave instead a generic "agency licence", but it well uses the IATA logo!:
However when we go to the IATA code checking tool (https://store.iata.org/ieccacfree) we find that such code is invalid ! :
Our experience
Our experience
This page comes from our experience on a buying a 4200€ fake ticket from http://airtrvl.com, an old URL of the same site and scammer (read later).
Many similar experiences from other people are reported here: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.airtrvl.com (note that the "positive" review are just fake, follow reading...).
mangoflights.com = airtrvl.com
mangoflights.com = airtrvl.com
While airtrvl.com is now down, you can easily check that mangoflights.com is actually a "rebranded" airtrvl.com using the wayback machine service of archive.org.
For example on https://web.archive.org/web/20220429230341/http://airtrvl.com/. Here is a screenshot of the two sites side by side:
The site is not 14 years on business, just a few months old
The site is not 14 years on business, just a few months old
The site claims to be on business by 14 years. You can check the domain name, when it has been first registered, and that's (apparently) true: the domain first registration is 14 years old.
Small problem, thanks again to archive.org wayback machine we can check that such domain has long been a parked domain, one of that domains where you end up for example when you misspelled the words "amazon" or "google", and it was for sale just a few months ago (for $1895 !)
Here is the claim (https://www.mangoflights.com/about.html) :
And here is our "verification", 6.dec.2008 and 7.apr.2020:
Note that the only fact of "mangoflights.com" existing by many years, together of the site doesn't containing any malware, is enough for many trust sites to give it a 100% trust score (sic!).
EDIT: this has finally changed, at least for scamadviser.com.
Cover up strategy (reviews & bogus sites to buy your trust)
Cover up strategy (reviews & bogus sites to buy your trust)
The scam network behaves proactively, "investing" part of the money into buying fake reviews, building affiliated sites to cover up the unlawful activity and marking the negative reviews as fake, with the Orwellian result that the true reviews pointing out to the fact that mangoflights.com is a scam are marked by sites such as trustpilot.com as outside of their terms and removed !
But let's uncover it up this activity...
Let's start on the "stars" that the site shows on its web site, pointing to a well known review site:
Noticing anything strange ? Look well at the bottom-left of the image.. the link doesn't point to the trustpilot review page of "mangoflights.com", but on those of "mangotours.com", an unrelated real business !
There is actually a trustpilot review page of mangoflights.com, https://www.trustpilot.com/review/mangoflights.com but the scammer managed to "cover it" with a fake bogus blog site of mango fruits and fill the page with fake reviews.
[EDIT]: Trustpilot has finally realised it and removed the fake site content and put instead the following note:
"We’ve found out that this company has been displaying Trustpilot content incorrectly.
This could mean showing an inaccurate star rating or TrustScore, or displaying reviews they’re not permitted to use.
We take the integrity of our platform very seriously, and wanted to let you know this company hasn’t been playing by the rules. When we uncover misuse, we take action and alert our community." [/EDIT]
See the following screenshot:
Same trick! This is the review page for "mangoflights.com" but it is bloated of fake reviews of a 2-page blog about mango fruits at "mangofight.com" (without the "l" and the "s").
If you are curious you can see the actual fake blog:
It has only 2 entries on 28 May, and the following day (29 May) are written all the 5-starts fake reviews on https://www.trustpilot.com/review/mangoflights.com :
And notice that some of the fake reviewers are "verified user" ! I would say, don't trust "trustpilot" !
But this issue with fake reviews/reviewers are not exclusive of trustpilot... all the most used review sites are flooded with hundreds if not thousand fake reviews of mangoflights.com that sometimes are so obviously fake that is clear these review sites do not show any interest in applying AI or other form of actual verification of their users.
Do you want to see an obvious example? The following screenshot is from https://www.islegitsite.com/check/mangoflights.com :
Look at the structure of the sentences... [When...] [,...] [Mangoflights...]
You don't need to apply the latest Deep Neural Network model to realise these reviews are all been written by the same guy (perhaps in this case the scammer got scammed into paying for a low quality fake review service ;-) )
To sum it up
To sum it up
Put super attention into buying flight tickets, and as always be suspicious of offers "too good to be true". They aren't, the margin in selling flight tickets are very low.
Don't trust reviews, trust sites, etc.. mangoflights.com has a "100% trust level" in sites like scamadviser.com (sic!)
And most importantly, never pay using bank transfer. After the money has left your bank, in most cases there is no way to recover them.
Good luck !
ADDENDUM: Other scam sites (possibly from the same scam ring)
ADDENDUM: Other scam sites (possibly from the same scam ring)
By crossing the fake positive reviews you can really create a map of fake sites/ scams managed by this scam ring.
Here are some (some of them have been already taken down):
maxibytes.com
volobank.com
royalculture.co.uk
pajamascustom.com
bossahearing.com
reversera.com
number1plates.com
getvisionfocus.com
profitmasters.academy
.... we could continue...
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