Fraudulent Shopify stores are impersonating legitimate music tech retailers from the UK and USA by scraping product data and advertising impossibly low prices. These scam sites are damaging both the reputation of authentic businesses and Shopify’s platform credibility.
Current Impact:
Multiple customers have been deceived by these fake stores
The original poster has successfully reported and shut down several sites, but finds the process time-consuming
Key Red Flags Identified:
Extreme discounts (50-70% off) that seem too good to be true
New domains (often still using myshopify subdomain)
Missing or fake contact information
Heavy social media marketing combined with suspicious pricing
Use of free or outdated themes
Recommended Actions:
Report fraudulent URLs through Shopify’s official abuse reporting form
Set up Google Alerts to monitor brand misuse
Educate customers about recognizing scam indicators
Open Question: Whether Shopify has implemented or plans to implement more robust seller authorization processes to prevent these fraudulent stores from launching remains unclear, with community members requesting official response from the platform.
Summarized with AI on October 24.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Over the past two weeks i’ve noticed a number of fake shopify websites posing as authentic companies from UK/USA within the music tech industry.
They appear to be scraping products from legit sites then marketing insane (impossible to fulfil) prices.
I’ve had a number of my customers fall for this and it’s tarnishing not only the names of the stores being imitated but also Shopify in general. I’ve reported and had at least a couple of these sites shut down now but it’s not what I should be spending my time on - it’s tedious.
Are Shopify aware of this happening and if so, what is being done to prevent it - the authorization process for sellers is proving not to be robust!
Yeah, there are a lot of scam/fake stores in last year. Though I did not see much complaints in last month. Does not mean they are declined , just maybe people do not report it.
I think Shopify is aware and probably have some strategy, but that can confirm just someone from the team. I would like to see their response on this. But it is true that opening store is easy, everyone can do it, and that should be a plus. But scammers use that and just make a process even faster/automated so they do not care if a few stores are reported. And if he authorization process for sellers become more robust maybe it would hold of some legitimate customers and scammers would find solution fast.
I think that customers should be more informed, to recognize a red flags:
big discounts, like 50%-70%, that sounds too good to be true, or they just make up old price and sale price is not that discounted. If customers do a quick search they could see that some prices re ridiculous
Often there are discounts on quantity, and that is just more free money to scammers as they will not ship either way
Domain, either really new like month or so, or even still on myshopify subdomain. I think there are not much stores that are legitimate and on subdomain, just some that just start and do not want to spent much.
Heavy marketing on social network, while everyone do that, if it matches with previous it is one more
Lack of contact information or fake one
I would say theme is also sign ( free ones, yeah not always, and some paid but old versions, probably nulled)
I was thinking to make a Browser extension, but no point when not much people would use it.
The problem is that scammers create fake Shopify websites that look like real stores and lure customers with absurd prices. The best you can do is submit these URLs using Shopify’s reporting form and have them report it to their abuse team. Plus, consider using Google Alerts to monitor instances of brand misuse and educating consumers through your own channels.