“Scam Alert: Fake 8 TB Hard Drives Sold on CDON Marketplace and Fynd24”

In recent years, CDON has gone from a retailer with its own warehouse to a trading platform, not unlike, for example, Amazon. With many different players, there are also those of a less serious kind, and in 2021, several traders were suspended after a series of frauds was discovered in connection with Black Friday. Fraudulent behavior seems to persist, however, and through SweClocker’s forum, advertisements with fake hard drives are noticed.

A SweClockers member was duped by Fynd24, which through the CDON Marketplace sells an external storage device specified at 8 TB and a price tag of SEK 829 – a relatively low price for the promised capacity. The motto “too good to be true” turned out to be true and when the storage device arrived, the product was a scam.

Connected to Windows, the drive did show up as 8TB, but the actual space was significantly less. The storage unit physically weighed not much more than 100 grams and, moreover, the promised write and read speeds could not be achieved. The explanation was on the inside. Instead of the SSD, there was a USB adapter with a memory card reader and an unmarked Micro SD card connected, which turned out to be just under 60GB in size.

Can only fill up to 100 GB, then folders become empty. Seems to be a memory card. – from ratings on Trustpilot

SweClocker’s member is also not alone in being affected. On The Trustpilot profile belonging to Fynd24, the ratings are not kind. In a rating from February, a user writes, among other things, exactly the same problem with a hard drive that did not turn out to be as promised and instead contained a memory card.

Memory cards of 8 TB are not available

For Micro SD cards, there are three commonly used standards, but none of them support more than 2 TB of storage space per memory card. That the memory card would meet the specifications stated in the advertisement is therefore impossible.

To make it appear that the device has more space, the control board that controls, for example, a memory card reader to report an incorrect number to the operating system is adjusted. It is a relatively common scam that dishonest hardware sellers make good use of on platforms such as Wish and Aliexpress.

SweClockers has contacted both Fynd24 and CDON for comment.