Faced with the shortage of El Mordjene, many sites claim to sell the famous Algerian spread. Be careful, this is yet another scam designed to steal banking data to make unauthorized withdrawals!
You have certainly heard of the spread “with roasted hazelnut cream” exported for several months by the Algerian company Cebon. The brown version evokes the taste of Nutella, while the white one recalls that of Kinder Bueno. At the beginning of the summer, influencers seized on this product and gave it such publicity, with great licks of the tongue and languorous exclamations of pleasure, that the situation became completely uncontrollable. Result: in a few weeks, the El Mordjene paste was out of stock.
And it’s impossible to get hold of it! In fact, it was banned from sale throughout the European Union on September 17, the date on which the pallets were blocked at the port of Marseille. This export ban is linked to the fact that Algeria did not provide the necessary guarantees to the European Commission to ensure that this type of merchandise is produced in conditions that ensure that it will not pose a danger to consumer health or animal health. In theory, it is therefore no longer possible to get a jar in a store in France. However, for a few days now, sites have been mysteriously popping up on the Internet that actually offer the desired spread. Of course, it’s too good to be true, they’re scams!
El Mordjene scam: fake merchant sites galore
This is the case, for example, of the site “Saveurs orientales”, which offers 350-gram pots for just under 4 euros and 700-gram pots from 6.86 euros. Or the site “Mordjene.fr” which sells the 700-gram pot for 13.9 euros. We also have “Mordjene.com”, which offers an “incredible” promotion on the 200-gram pot, which goes from 6.95 euros to only 1.95 euros – be careful, there are only seven pots left in stock! And that’s without counting the ads for fake sites that are rife on TikTok!
Knoetziea content creator on TikTok, shared her experience on the social network. The young woman unfortunately fell for the bait – do you have it? – and ordered several pots of spread on the site “Saveurs orientales”, for a total of 20 euros. She received a confirmation email and waited. After a week, she still received nothing. That’s when she discovered a suspicious transaction on her bank account for 1.58 euros then 59 euros, the denomination of which was unknown to her.
“They made an initial withdrawal of two euros to see if it was a real account. As it happened, they withdrew 59 euros.”she explains. “I got scammed.” Fortunately, the videographer had the right reflex and immediately blocked her card. And she is far from being the only one to have been scammed, if we are to believe the comments under her video! Some Internet users have thus seen sums of up to 700 euros debited!
El Mordjene scam: a spread that is nowhere to be found
The principle is always the same: a fake online sales site offers the entire range of El Mordjene spreads at attractive prices. Some will even encourage Internet users to buy them in batches! But when the victims make a purchase, the scammers take advantage of the opportunity to retrieve all their banking data and then make direct debits from the customer’s account. And it can happen very quickly!
As Cebon points out in a press release shared on Facebook, the company behind the spread does not have any online resale store. “No authorization has been granted to third parties to create online sales sites on our behalf, whether in Algeria or internationally.” Any site that claims otherwise is definitely a scam.
If you have ever been scammed and had the misfortune of giving out your banking information, report the scam on the official website of the Ministry of the Interior, Percival, which allows you to report credit card fraud, and call your bank without delay to take the necessary measures, including blocking it. In all cases, forward the scam to Signal Spam or to Pharos. You can also report these fraudulent messages to the site internet-signalement.gouv.fr.