Anyone who’s used to carrying out transactions regularly will probably be familiar with escrow. For the uninitiated, escrow basically refers to a trusted third-party that holds the amount to be transacted until the buyer has received his goods and is satisfied. The system is often used on sites like eBay – the buyer deposits his cash into escrow, waits for the goods to arrive, then releases the money to the seller once they’ve been received. It’s also popular with many freelancers and outsources seeking to protect themselves from non payment or shoddy work.

Escrow lessens the risk of buyers and sellers being scammed, something that happens all too often over the internet these days. But what happens if the escrow service itself is in on the scam? It’s a situation that few will have considered, yet according to the security firm BitDefender, it’s quickly catching on among scammers today.

There are currently around 2,000 fake escrow sites on the internet today, says BitDefender. The company notes that these sites are often in cahoots with sellers looking to scam their customers, and sometimes even set up by the sellers themselves. The way it works is, the scammer posts an item for sale on an authentic website like Ebay or Amazon or whatever, then asks buyers to use the fake escrow service that they’ve set up. Once the money is forwarded to escrow, that’s the last the buyer ever hears from it or the seller.

Interestingly, the creators of these fake escrow sites tend to step up their efforts at certain times of th year, with the number of sites popping up increasing significantly in December, just before everyone does their online shopping. Unfortunately, pretty much any item advertised online could be being hawked by a potential scammer, but most of them tend to go for the more expensive stuff. Cars, motorbikes, jewelry, bicycles and electronic devices were listed by BitDefender as the most popular gadgets being “shipped” to nowhere due to their high value.

Catalin Cosoi, Chief Security Strategist at BitDefender, said that the danger lies in how convincing these scammers can be:

“That’s precisely how they make money. They put a great deal of effort into coming across as legitimate, even to the point of warning victims to protect themselves from credit card and payment fraud. A typical statement seeking to reassure victims is that they never request their bank details – but of course, it makes no difference with escrow fraud.”

So how does one go about avoiding dodgy escrow sites? Actually, it’s not so difficult, you just need to remember not to be too trusting. If a seller recommends a certain escrow provider, be sure to perform a checkup using the WHOIS service that can help you to determine who owns that site. Even better, find a reliable escrow service for yourself and insist on using that one for all of your online purchases.