Amid soaring DDR5 memory prices due to market shortages, scammers are devising increasingly sophisticated schemes to deceive buyers. One recent case involved a buyer on Amazon Spain who purchased several kits of XPG Caster DDR5-6000 RAM (32 GB, 2x16 GB) at what seemed like a bargain price.
A user with the nickname BravoNorris bought the last four available new and sealed kits. Two of them turned out to be normal: he resold one, and successfully installed the other into his system. However, upon unpacking the third kit, he discovered a fake—instead of modern DDR5 modules, there were old DDR2 sticks inside, with homemade stickers attached to mimic XPG cooling heatsinks. To deceive during weighing, the scammer added a metal plate to the box to compensate for the difference in weight.
The packaging looked brand new: in factory film, with shipping from a warehouse in Ireland. Through the window in the box, the fake could deceive an inexperienced buyer. Experts suggest that this is a classic return scam—the scammer bought the original kit, replaced the contents with old junk, carefully packed it, and returned the item to Amazon, after which it was put up for sale again as new.