Dealer Watch · by Bikoosh
Someone can clone your dealership's website today. Would you notice?
A documented, fast-growing scam: fraudsters build full replicas of real dealership sites - inventory, staff profiles, even AI-generated reviews - on near-name domains (one transposed letter, an added hyphen), then lure buyers into wiring money for vehicles that never ship. State authorities have issued alerts; dealers find out when defrauded buyers call. Dealer Watch monitors your name, inventory, and domains, and hands you the reports pre-filled.
Free scan: dealership name + your website · no account · private report · buyers can use the free dealer-site check, no email needed
This is documented, not hypothetical
Frank on Fraud has tracked the fake auto, tractor, and heavy-equipment dealer scam and a rising wave of dealer cloning - 200+ scam sites cataloged. Wisconsin issued a state alert on cloned dealer websites (March 2025), and Autoblog documented AI-built fake dealerships costing buyers thousands. Closed dealerships get impersonated too.
What it watches
- Near-name clone domains - your dealership name or domain with a transposed letter or added hyphen, registered fresh.
- Your inventory photos and listings - perceptual matching that survives crops and recolors, on domains outside your approved list.
- Shared-contact fake networks - your phone or address reused across a cluster of impersonating sites.
- Wire/crypto lure pages - payment and fast-shipping wording that marks the documented dealer-clone pattern.
Pricing
DEALER
$29 /month · or $290/year
- 1 dealership, daily monitoring
- Name, inventory photos, listings, domains watched
- Email alerts on new findings only
- Evidence snapshots + report kits
GROUP
$79 /month
- Up to 5 rooftops / locations
- Everything in Dealer, per rooftop
- One consolidated weekly digest
Answers
- A buyer wired money to a fake version of our dealership
- Dealership impersonation monitoring - what it is and who needs it
- A fake website is impersonating our dealership
- Scammers are impersonating our closed dealership
- Is this dealership website real? A buyer's check
- Someone registered a near-name domain of our dealership
- How to report a fake dealer site
- Our inventory photos are on another dealer site
Dealer Watch provides monitoring assistance, not legal advice. Findings are similarity signals that require your confirmation - they are not accusations about any website. Where an external service has flagged a page, we cite that flag; we never make such claims ourselves. Weekly aggregate numbers are public in the Dealer Clone Index.