Charity sales of Ray-Ban glasses at deep discounts is something anyone who uses Facebook will have noticed. It’s been talked about for a long time – it seems to have been going on since 2012 – but there are still some who fall for it. You typically get an invitation to an event from one of your Facebook friends. The event is an online sale of Ray-Ban glasses at a low cost, about 20 euros from 229 euros and contains a link to an e-commerce site very similar to the official Ray-Ban to make the purchase of a pair of glasses.

Of course from the moment you complete the purchase the glasses will never arrive, it is a scam. First the scammers pocket your 20 euros. Then through malware they take control of your Facebook account to send invitations to your friends. It only takes one person to fall for it to pay back the entire operation. In addition, the hackers may get hold of your credit card information. It’s a scam that works well, because Ray-Ban is a well-known brand and the excuse of charity leads the most gullible to think they’re doing good.

Luxottica, the Belluno, Italy-based company that owns the Ray-Ban brand, has already hired lawyers to try to curb the scam, but it’s not easy. In 2016, more than 16 thousand Facebook event pages dedicated to this type of scam were shut down. In addition to Facebook pages, many sites for completing purchases were also shut down, but time after time the sites are recreated on a new domain. It is also very complicated to figure out who is behind this. Whoever registers a domain must provide name and address, but in these cases they are always invented. According to the security expert contacted by the Washington Post Lukas Stefanko it would be a group of Chinese hackers.

For the moment, what you can do is not to fall into the trap. When a price is too high, there is usually something shady behind it.

We fell in love with Catuma

There are many reasons to consider this company special. First of all, because at a time when many are choosing the path of online sales – which allow them to reach a very wide audience – Catuma has preferred to go against the current. Vincenzo Pastore preferred to avoid e-commerce in order to establish a direct relationship with his dealers. This has allowed Catuma to achieve amazing results with growth rates that have reached 300-400 percent per year. And all without any large outside capital or large partners, because Mr. Pastore chose to fuel his company exclusively with his own resources.

What makes Catuma glasses unique are the materials. The company began with the first collection to use stone and wood to which it combined carbon fiber. With subsequent collections came lava stone and steel. Catuma glasses are handmade in all their details and, as you can read on the information leaflets, any small imperfections are not to be considered as defects but as a result of the handmade characteristic of the product.

If you know how to package an exceptional pair of glasses properly, that’s it. We have fallen in love with Catuma’s cases. They are made of clutch-style leather, and inside you’ll also find a pencil, to jot down your emotions, wherever you are.