COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – This holiday season, shoppers should be careful where they click. Scammers are impersonating a popular Columbus-based retailer online.

At first glance, an ad might look like it’s from Big Lots. Clicking on it will lead to what looks like the Big Lots website, full of deeply discounted items, from a $31 dollar bicycle to a $9 air fryer.

According to the Better Business Bureau, it’s all a hoax.

“We continue to work with Big Lots to get the word out, to be very careful that you’re shopping at Big Lots and not a Big Lots imposter,” said Lee Anne Lanigan, the director of Customer Relations and Investigations at the BBB for Central Ohio. “There are at least 18 very similar websites that the scammers are currently using.”

Lanigan said scammers are buying online ads, taking advantage of Big Lots’s recognition and reputation, and enticing victims by advertising discounts that are quite literally too good to be true.

“The ad pops up, you think, ‘Big Lots? I know Big Lots.’ You follow the ad. It’s a super price, you make the purchase. And then nothing arrives,” Lanigan said. 

Online retail scams are incredibly common around the winter holidays. According to FBI data, American shoppers lost more than $73 million to this type of racket during the 2022 holiday season. And that’s just among the roughly 12,000 people who actually reported their losses to the FBI.

Thankfully, shoppers can avoid becoming part of that statistic just by checking the URL. If it’s not “biglots.com,” it’s not the real thing.

Reached by NBC4 for comment, a spokesman for Big Lots replied, “We continuously monitor for fake look-alike websites and apps and make every effort to have any we find removed swiftly, including alerting social media platforms, federal authorities, and contacting other appropriate organizations, such as the BBB.”

The spokesman said Big Lots urges all customers to be vigilant and always double check any link to a special deal or website to make sure it’s genuine.

Customers should shop by visiting the store’s website directly at www.biglots.com.