Faresbucket LLC | Expedia Impersonators

Scams Travel Scam
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I was first alerted to this company when investigating another lead brought to me by @U.S.Airways, regarding a possible connection between our favorite travel agency and another confirmed scam travel agency (it was dead end).

Starting from the top, I was told about Smartfaresflights, a completely separate entity from you know who, and began looking into them. Their website is down, and all things indicate them closing in mid to late 2021. An archive of their site gave me the number (855) 869-7429, and their Twitter gives us the number (844) 747-8444. This however, is all I am willing to give on them as I do not know if they are connected to the company in the title, so I have no way to show that they are a scam company.

Despite that, their 8444 number is listed as the number for Faresbucket LLC, such as here, and their Twitter lists the 8444 number being in their possession at the start of 2019. So Smartfaresflights has it on their Twitter with a last post in mid 2020, meaning they either had an old number posted to their Twitter bio for over a year and a half, or they are in some way connected. Neither can be confirmed however.

When searching Faresbucket LLC, we find out that their website is down, but we find Airlinerc claiming to be owned by Faresbucket LLC. Their website also gives us the number (888) 597-0733, which when Google’d we find two more sites, Farespedia and Faresxpohttps://faresxpo.com/. The latter also gives us the number (833) 411-0164. The 0733 answers, and will give a callback number of (847) 865-4279. However this may be a personal number of the agent who called me back.

The issue with Faresbucket LLC, and why I say they impersonate Expedia is that when you call the only active number, the 0733 one, they will claim to be Expedia. However, Expedia does not know who they are and do not own any of the aforementioned phone numbers.

I have a short video of the agent who called me back claiming they are Expedia. However, I do have a larger video that I need to do some editing on, one that I believe best highlights the extent of their impersonation and will post in responses as soon as it’s finished.

That being said, I would like some help in finding out more on this company and their shady practices. If they are willing to lie and say they are Expedia when answering the phone, what are they saying about themselves offline? I cannot find anything, so how are they up? From the Airlinerc website? The other two sites all give Google warnings, so it’s doubtful those are helping them out.

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In the video, it is clear they are impersonation Expedia
Contact Information

Faresbucket, LLC
364 E Main St
Middletown, DE 19709
(UPS mailbox)

FireFox warns me an harmful URL farespedia[.]com
farespedia, a scam
https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i10702-k8184890-Farespedia_are_a_scam_RUN-Air_Travel.html

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I checked into this thread and found a couple interesting things:

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So it seems like this could be a lead, although more than likely dead end. The website is down, and it seems like it died sometime in mid 2020. I also found this Crunchbase page. This could be who the poster is referring too, but I can’t be too sure about it.

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I’m not entirely sure if the poster here is referring to superfares as smartairtrip, what do you guys think?

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At first I was a bit curious, I didn’t see any activity from this group before 2018, but it seems they’ve been around for much longer than I previously thought.

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My dialler searches turn up brand new travel numbers every day, averaging around 10-12
These often turn up in between known scam numbers and will be active for sometimes only a week or two.
There are hundreds of other still active numbers that will not return any results when searched.
I now have over 2000 numbers in my travel and hotel database, all of which have nothing to do with genuine travel companies.
These things have been showing up increasingly rapidly since around April/May this year, which coincides with the airline and travel industry crisis

They who shall remain nameless have over 800 active numbers.
They have blocks of consecutive numbers in the toll free and area code zones
Sitting in wait for that ever so close but slightly wrong misdial
Sounds nothing but genuine to me but what would I know, apart from 44,000 other mostly active scam numbers and that list grows daily

There is also a massive fraud going on with Mexican and Filipino call centres impersonating a well known hotel chain and equally well known car rental chain I’ve located on a multitude of numbers for each.
The fake hotel scam rapidly morphs into a gazillion dollar timeshare scam after the initial con
They’ve given up a wealth of information they wish they hadn’t so far.
Things aren’t looking bright in all their futures

The Farcebook group which somehow cracked apart when pushed the right way is very revealing into the fake air travel industry. Payment gateway providers guaranteeing a unique fake company name for every statement transaction, along with recruitment of experienced travel industry scammers from low level phone monkeys to start up company managers.

Thousands of active advertisements and participants waiting for the scam industry to call them.

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