Debbie Hughes was doing some very early online Christmas shopping when she typed ‘Tiffany & Company’ into the search bar. ‘Up came a website called Tiffany & Company On Sale and I thought, wow!’ says the 57-year-old Ohioan. ‘They were selling a sterling silver necklace and bracelet for $228-what it usually costs for just the bracelet.’ But the website didn’t belong to the famous New York jeweler, despite looking quite a bit like the one that does. Its address-www.tiffanyco.mn-was a tweak of the real Tiffany website, www.tiffany.com, and the .mn meant it was registered as a Mongolian site. And the discount designer jewelry that Hughes ordered? It did arrive-in a package with a Chinese postmark. ‘It was chrome-like junk,’ she tells Scam Alert. But the gift box was a very clever copy of a Tiffany box. It took Hughes, who operates a home-based business selling books and DVDs over the Internet, nearly four months to get a refund from her credit card company. The fake Tiffany company ignored her e-mails requesting a refund, and its website had no telephone number. Popular brands make prime targets The scam here is called ‘cybersquatting.’ It occurs when […]