MILAN, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Cybersecurity firm Bitdefender said on Tuesday it had uncovered a wave of online scams using near-identical sites to the official Milano Cortina 2026 merchandise store to trick shoppers in Europe and the United States.
Bitdefender Labs said the scam was spreading through fraudulent adverts on Meta platforms that promote discounts of up to 80% on supposedly official Olympic merchandise.
Users who click on the ads are redirected to lookalike websites designed to harvest payment details, home addresses, phone numbers, email accounts and in some cases even login credentials. Victims may receive counterfeit goods or nothing at all and they risk having their personal data compromised.
According to Bitdefender, the scam relies on highly convincing replicas of the official Olympics shop.
Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics press office said they "are aware of unauthorised websites that misuse the Games brand and these are promptly reported to the relevant authorities" to have them removed.
Meta was not immediately available for comment.
The fraudulent sites use identical product photos, colour schemes, branding elements and merchandise collections.
Many of the fake domains were registered only days apart and are promoted through newly created Facebook pages. Bitdefender said this suggests a coordinated infrastructure built to rotate quickly and avoid detection.
Many of the rogue sites disappear within hours or days of processing payments, leaving no possibility of refunds.
The company said subtle differences can reveal the fraud. The official store advertises offers such as "Sign up and save 15%", while the cloned sites promote "Sign up and save 80%".
Bitdefender advised checking domain registration details, being wary of extreme discounting, and verifying the history of Facebook pages promoting the offers.
The scale and sophistication of the operation mean thousands of users could be at risk as the end of the Games approaches, it added.
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi, editing by Hugh Lawson and Toby Davis)
