At first glance, Vogue Melbourne looks every inch an upmarket Australian boutique.

The website features photos of models in fashionable clothes and slogans like “Be You Be Beautiful”.

It boasts 100,000 satisfied customers, an extensive catalogue of items and claims to accept a range of reputable payment options.

Look a little closer though and things aren’t quite what they seem.

You might have noticed that the site is advertising a Halloween sale with up to 50 per cent discounts.

Halloween came and went at the end of October, but that sale has continued.

Since ABC NEWS Verify started monitoring this site in early October, there has always been an up to 50 per cent discount advertised. Back then, it was called a “winter sale”.

Let’s look closer at one product: this dress.

It looks like a professionally taken photograph of a stylish garment. The site even gives it a “trademarked” name “Annaliese”.

The photos appear to have come from London fashion brand House of CB.

The garment is the Lolita Apricot Corset Sundress, for sale with House of CB for $322 (currently on sale for $261).

We also found the same photographs advertising the dress on Chinese shopping website AliExpress for as little as $19.09. So either Vogue Melbourne is getting a sweet deal on a designer fashion item, or it is shipping a cheap knock off.

As the name — and this sandwich board — suggest, Vogue Melbourne claims to have a physical presence in Victoria’s capital. It even lists a physical address on the home page, placing it inside Melbourne’s upmarket Emporium shopping centre.

But this image has been generated from a custom stock image company.

And it’s unlikely that a Sydney store will be opening anytime soon when there’s no record of the Melbourne store inside the Emporium mall.

Then there are the reviews. The site appears to be displaying an authentic Trustpilot review system, a legitimate website which allows customers to provide public feedback about businesses.

Vogue Melbourne claims its Trustpilot rating is excellent — but again, it’s a fake.

The actual rating according to the real Trustpilot site? Bad.

But surely it’s not all negative, right?

At least Vogue Melbourne offers a 30-day, money-back guarantee?

Well, the site’s real Trustpilot page is full of stories of that promise not being kept by the store.

Vogue Melbourne presents itself as a high-end, Australian fashion retailer. But as you can see, it is anything but.

ABC NEWS Verify has discovered many more sites just like it, all convincing Australians to part with their money, sometimes for an inferior product and sometimes for no product at all …

How social media is giving scammers the tools they need to trick Australians into parting with their money.

Vogue Melbourne is one of more than 50 shopping websites ABC NEWS Verify has tracked over several months that appear to be falsely representing themselves online as high-end Australian retailers.

Almost exclusively run from overseas, the websites are mass-produced digital stores sometimes selling cheap and often poor-quality products imported directly from Asia.

They have a strong and seemingly unchecked presence on Meta’s social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.

Despite having names like Sydney Stylista, Beaumont Gold Coast and Perth Apparel, Facebook transparency information often shows these pages have several administrators outside of Australia.

Nonetheless, social media giant Meta allows these pages to run ads on its platforms that target Australians and funnel them to their websites.

Many of the ads use similar language, and sometimes the same images that tug at the heart strings of shoppers, with talk of closing down sales, and shop fires.

While there’s nothing illegal about shipping goods in from another country, customers are being tricked into thinking they are shopping locally. They’re left with little practical recourse for international returns or exchanges, and often hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

Meta didn’t respond directly to detailed questions from ABC NEWS Verify by time of publication, but confirmed they are looking into the flagged pages.

“We are investigating this matter. Meta doesn’t want scams on our platforms, and we are continuing to invest in tools and technology to prevent them. The safety of our users is of utmost importance, and we continue to work with industry, the government and law enforcement to protect Australians from scams.”

Deception in action

The 57 online stores ABC NEWS Verify has tracked are managed and run by different people and groups but have a very similar look online.

The websites appear to have been designed and created using common templates on the e-commerce platform Shopify. They then advertise heavily on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

The products they sell are mostly mass-produced fast-fashion items, commonly produced in Asia.

The sites all use a legal supply chain model called dropshipping. The product you receive has often been shipped from an entirely different country, without any direct handling from the seller.

Normally, when you make a purchase on a website …

… it’s the retailer who ships the product directly to you.

But with dropshipping, the retailer places an order with a supplier, who could be located in a completely different country.

That supplier then ships the item directly to you, without the involvement of the retailer who you placed the order with.

So what happens when you want to make a return or exchange? Some of these dropshipping websites offer them for “free”.

But you can’t just return your item to the online store that you bought from.

Buried in the returns policy fine print of many of the stores we investigated, was a clause which states returns are shipped back to a central warehouse in Asia. That’s the original supplier.

And while the buyer could possibly get their money back …

… what they’re often surprised to learn, often buried in the fine print, is that they have to foot the international shipping bill to send the item back to the supplier.

This can sometimes be close to or equal the amount paid for the item in the first place.

This is difficult for consumer regulators to police, as while dropshipping is a perfectly legal business model, where this scam begins is the misleading tactics being used to deceive shoppers into thinking they’ve been dealing with a local business.

This can leave customers feeling misled, dissatisfied and out-of-pocket.

Rosie Thomas, the director of campaigns at consumer watchdog Choice told ABC NEWS Verify that after thinking you’ve been dealing with an Australian business, the idea that you would have to pay to ship the item back overseas to return it often comes as “quite a shock”.

“Even if you return the item, if you don’t get the refund, or you don’t get the response that you would like, there are limited options in the digital environment as to where you can take your complaint.”

Catriona Lowe, the deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission told ABC NEWS Verify that all customers shopping online in Australia — even with international operators — have rights.

“If consumers do feel that they’ve been misled by this conduct, we encourage them to get in contact either with our info centre or with their state and territory fair trading agencies.”

‘Shocked to the socks’

Retired music teacher Julie (not her real name) was excited when she spotted a colourful knitted jumper advertised for sale on Instagram by the now-defunct online store Aussie Hilda.

At $84 the jumper wasn’t an insignificant purchase for the aged pensioner, but she reasoned that its ‘original price’, at $250, was listed far higher and that she may have stumbled onto a bargain.

“Very naively, my mind thought that it was a good quality item and it had been reduced. I thought it was coming from Australia. And I thought if there’s any problem with it, I’ll be able to just send it back to Australia, probably to Melbourne,” she said.

What arrived in the post several weeks later was far from the high-quality warm jumper she was expecting. Instead it was a low-quality polyester fabric with the pattern of a knit printed onto it.

“Thin plastic-y fabric has been used to make the jumper and then something is stamped onto it at the front and the back.”

The ACCC’s Catriona Lowe says it appears Julie has the right to lodge a formal complaint.

“It is incredibly important that the business is not misleading consumers about the nature of their business, about what they might expect in terms of delivery times and of course, that what they are purchasing, or what they can see online, matches what they ultimately are delivered.”

A second shock came when Julie tried to return the item and arrange a refund.

“They said I’d have to send it back to some address in China somewhere, and that I would have to pay the postage to which I said to them, ‘well, it’s going to cost me almost the same amount in postage as it cost me for the actual item’,” Julie said.

Julie is one of more than 40 disgruntled customers of these websites that ABC NEWS Verify has spoken to as part of this investigation. She eventually managed to obtain a refund through PayPal after weeks of frustrating back and forth with Aussie Hilda administrators, who appear to be located in Indonesia.

Extraordinarily, when the 73-year-old Sydneysider reported the page to Instagram’s parent company Meta for its deceptive behaviour, she says her account was temporarily blocked, while Aussie Hilda’s page remained active and advertising for many more weeks.

Choice’s Ms Thomas says Meta needs to do much more.

“We think, at a minimum, Meta should be verifying the identities of the businesses that it’s taking money from to advertise on their platforms.

“This would ensure that those businesses are who they say they are. And in the case of scams, should pick up whether or not it is an impersonation and and there’s a significant risk for consumers.”

Fake fashion

One of the most common deceptions we’ve seen the 57 tracked websites use is fake product reviews.

In addition to the fake Trustpilot reviews highlighted earlier, many of these sites also display fake unbranded testimonials often using stock or AI generated images.

The familiar names on these reviews below, for example, give away the game. The names do not even match the supplied photographs.

These fake reviews often have wording that no human would ever actually use. Using dated Australian slang like “cobber” and describing delivery as “quick as a rat up a drainpipe”, they appear to be crafted to seem authentic to Australians but are anything but.

The lies and AI carry over to many of the ads we see plastered across Meta’s social media platforms — with claims of shops closing down, burning down and using artificially generated store owners.

We’ve also tracked shops stealing or altering photos of real Australian shopfronts.

Legitimate Melbourne store Kloke had no idea a photo of its very real store was being used by Wilson Melbourne on its Facebook page, until contacted by ABC NEWS Verify.

Fake Sydney outlet TrendyOz is actually a badly photoshopped photo of a Calvin Klein store in Sydney’s CBD Westfield.

One site, various countries

Online store Vogue Melbourne claims to be run by Garry Williams, an Australian physiotherapist and Cècile Laurent, a “talented” French fashion designer.

Vogue Melbourne presents these photographs of “Garry” and “Cècile” on its About Us page.

As we mentioned, it claims Garry is Australian, and Cècile is French.

But Vogue Melbourne is not the only shopping website these images appear on.

They’re also here on Marlo London, which targets British customers.

But this time, Garry is English.

At Modezentrum Krause, which looks identical but targets German customers, the language changes …

Cècile and her profession remain. Garry, meanwhile, has been replaced by “Thomas Krause”, who is now a German physiotherapist.

ABC NEWS Verify has established the real identities of both of these people using open source intelligence techniques.

Both had their images taken from their own websites or social media accounts, apparently without their knowledge.

“Garry” is actually a Dutch man, who we were not able to contact.

And “Cècile” is an American woman named Cora, who expressed astonishment that her image had been stolen and used on these websites when contacted by ABC NEWS Verify.

“I had no idea they were using my photo or claiming it was them in the photo. There was definitely no consent given on my part,” she said.

“It is extremely confusing why they would take my photo and say that they are the ones in it. They are trying to deceive people and it’s quite sickening. It’s also just frustrating because that is a photo of me working and taken by a professional photographer which makes me feel violated.”

These three websites appear to be connected to each other through a single operator, as well as to a fourth website, Averley Boutique Toronto.

The websites list the same Dutch business name and number in their terms and service pages and ABC NEWS Verify has also documented them using the same PayPal as a payment beneficiary.

The beneficiary is listed as NYH E-Commerce. According to Dutch business records, the company has a sole shareholder and employee named Nadir El Haddouti.

The postal address for the business is this self-storage unit in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

It isn’t clear where Mr El Haddouti lives, but he has ties to both the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates through his Dutch-registered business.

His business number is also listed on the website of a luxury car rental company based in Dubai as well as a consultancy business geared towards minimising value-added tax for dropshippers, based in the Netherlands.

Dutch business records show the operations related to his business number include the “renting of passenger cars and light motor vehicles” and “retail sale via internet of apparel and clothing accessories”.

Social media accounts belonging to the luxury car rental business, Carplug Dubai, suggest the operator mixes with others living opulent lifestyles.

For instance, one video, which shows a young man revving a performance car valued at over $100,000, is captioned in Dutch “Samen met de jongste CEO van NL”. This translates to “Together with the youngest CEO of NL [the Netherlands]”.

ABC NEWS Verify attempted to contact Mr El Haddouti through various channels, but received no response.

Opaque ownership is common to the 57 pages tracked by ABC NEWS Verify.

We detected ties to individuals based overseas in all the sites we tracked. Links to the Netherlands were frequently found among this cohort.

Operating a business outside of Australia that dropships goods into the country is something that is perfectly legal and thus, outside the scope of regulators.

Where it becomes a problem is when consumers think they are dealing with a local business, and all the imputations of quality and ease of dealings that come with that assumption.

Shopify templates: fast, cheap and easy to create

There’s a whole industry built around creating websites just like these on gig economy websites like Fiverr.

ABC NEWS Verify has seen a range of different prices and delivery times for fully operational shopping websites offered on that platform.

The cheapest and quickest we came across was a 10-product website with a three-day delivery time for just under $50. We saw prices on other accounts for as much as $1,000 for a 50-product store delivered in a week.

Some of these sellers go on to offer to manage the marketing and operation of the page for several hundred of dollars a month.

ABC NEWS Verify also came across multiple websites that were almost identical in layout.

We know the websites were being operated by different people because the PayPal beneficiaries were different, and their Facebook pages listed administrators in different countries.

These four seemingly unrelated pages all appear to be modelled from a website called Sol and Sparrow Melbourne.

Whoever built the three copies hasn’t even bothered to delete Sol and Sparrow’s name from the body copy on some of their product pages and some use the very same images.

Shopify didn’t respond to detailed questions from ABC NEWS Verify but a spokesperson confirmed it was investigating the online shops flagged.

“Shopify’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) clearly outlines what is not permitted on our platform. We’re reviewing these stores and will take action on any found to violate our policies.”

There are now a range of companies online that allow these websites to be created with ease and at scale, meaning purveyors can dropship to anywhere in the world with little effort.

It’s clear these Australian-targeted websites we have uncovered are just the tip of an international iceberg.

Remember that dress from before? A simple reverse image search shows a raft of similar internationally-focused websites on which it appears.

This grift is truly global.

Think before you add to cart

As shoppers wade through Black Friday sales and then into Christmas shopping, many might be asking how they can keep themselves safe when seeking to buy high quality and good value products online.

ABC NEWS Verify asked our experts from Choice and the ACCC for their top tips when it comes to shopping online and avoiding scams.

Ms Thomas from Choice says slowing down is key.

“Scam ads or fraudulent retailer ads very likely will create a sense of urgency to try and make you act quickly.

(It’s worth mentioning that none of the URLs we encountered in our investigation carried a .au Australian domain, though its presence in a URL doesn’t necessarily mean the site you’re looking at is not a scam.)

Catriona Lowe from the ACCC agrees that doing a bit of homework can save heartache later on. Being skeptical of reviews posted directly on the website is a good start.

“Be wary of websites that you’re not familiar with, including if you might have received adverts about them on social media,” she said.

“And then the last tip that we give to people is, if you are feeling a little cautious you may wish to shop with a credit or debit card. What that means is, if something does go wrong, you may have the right to do what’s called a chargeback, and that means actually reversing that transaction with your financial institution, rather than the particular business that you might have given those details to.”

How we did this story and the limits of what we could reveal

On the breadth of work behind this story

ABC NEWS Verify spent months documenting and investigating overseas dropshipping operations that falsely claimed to have a physical presence in Australia.

The operations were identified by reviewing advertisements targeting Australians on Meta’s platforms like Facebook along with keyword searches of Meta’s ad library. 

Our investigation focused on stores that had an implied and or explicit physical presence in Australia — ranging from stores using Australian locations in their names to dropshipping stores creating digital images of fake physical shop fronts in Australian locations.

ABC NEWS Verify then investigated who was behind them, unearthing links across the globe including ties to countries such as the Netherlands, UAE, China and the United States.

Our investigation also helped unveil some of the common tactics and practices these kinds of operations deploy.

Although ABC NEWS Verify uncovered the identity of a several overseas individuals and businesses linked to some stores, most remain opaque, due in part to measures by the operators to mask their ownership and because of the transparency limitations of the Australian version of Meta’s ad library.

On the the limits of Meta’s ad library

Although Meta has greater transparency on digital ads than some other digital platforms, the company’s ad transparency in Australia is limited compared to some jurisdictions like the EU.

Meta in the EU is subject to the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) which, once introduced, compelled Meta to display and archive all ads that targeted people in the EU, and store them for a year.

Detecting scammers and others abusing Meta’s platforms in Australia remains a “whack-a-mole” exercise — one exacerbated by Meta’s closure of the transparency tool CrowdTangle earlier this year.

Credits

• Reporter and editor: Lucy Carter
• Reporter, digital producer and design: Matt Martino
• Reporter: Michael Workman
• Designer: Devi Mallal
• Developer: Julian Fell