How to Avoid Fake Kratom

As kratom becomes more popular, the number of people who want to make money out of it increases.

However, while many kratom sellers are honest and reliable, there are also other vendors ready to make money at any cost. Even by scamming you by selling fake kratom.

Fake Kratom Vendors

These unreliable vendors will offer kratom products that are incredibly cheap. But real, high-quality kratom is not cheap neither to import nor to produce. That is why kratom can seem expensive sometimes. If you find kratom that looks way too cheap, especially in an online market store, such as eBay, watch out! You might have come across with a dodgy vendor, trying to sell you fake kratom or another low-quality product.

Vendors of fake kratom will often imitate the logo, labels, and branding of popular legit kratom vendors. This is a way of gaining the trust of innocent buyers. But take into account that kratom reliable vendors will sell their products on their own websites.

Tips to Avoid Fake Kratom

If you find a kratom product (whether raw kratom powder or any type of extract) from a known, legit vendor that has its own site in an online store like eBay and the product is much cheaper than usual, be careful: you are probably seeing an «imitation» of the real product. But fake kratom vendors can also have their own site. So, prior to making any purchase in a web you do not know, check the site thoroughly, especially the customer service and contact page. Do not trust a vendor that does not provide a contact form, or this is just a physical address with no other ways of reaching them.

Furthermore, given the lack of regulations on kratom, sellers of fake or low-quality kratom know their actions will go unpunished.

When kratom is way too cheap, the product may quite likely be:

• Fake kratom (which might be even unsafe)
• Expired kratom (most of the times repackaged to look fresh)
• Kratom illegally obtained

Fake Kratom

You’d probably be surprised at the amount of fake kratom that you can find out there. Unethical vendors are selling products as kratom. But in fact, these products are not kratom. Some of them, for instance, are selleing Mitragyna Parvifolia, which is a tree from the same family as kratom (kratom’s scientific name is Mitragyna speciosa), but which lacks kratom’s alkaloids and can even have unpleasant side effects. And they are selling this different plant labeled as kratom. Others mix fake kratom product with expired kratom.

Fake kratom can be useless, at best, but since there is no control on the products wrongly sold as kratom, fake kratom could be potentially dangerous.

Expired Kratom

Another form of scamming is by selling expired or old kratom as a new, fresh product. Sometimes legitimate kratom vendors sell kratom that is about to expire at very low prices. Dodgy vendors buy great amounts of this old kratom and mix it with fake kratom. In other occasions, they just repackage it as new and sell it, sometimes at a price lower than the average price of that kratom strain or product type, but still gaining a profit. Expired or old kratom has lost most of the properties of fresh kratom, so buying expired kratom is very much like throwing away your money.

Illegally Obtained Kratom (Stolen Kratom)

There are some unethical individuals who are willing to go so far as to steal kratom from legitimate vendors. They can even break into warehouses where vendors keep their products. Not only that, unfortunately, there are also cases in which legit kratom vendors are stolen by their own employees! The stolen kratom will end up in the hands of other criminals who will sell the kratom at low prices. Or the thieves can sell it themselves. In both cases, the stolen kratom will prejudice not only to the honest vendos, but also to costumers.

Eventually, buying stolen kratom could result in a rise of the prices of kratom, as vendors would finally have to cover up for the losses, and even in the disappearance of reliable kratom vendors, who could end up in giving up and closing their business.

Remember that the best way to avoid buying fake kratom is to buy kratom from a reliable vendor.