Beyond the tarnish these fly-by-night ‘ghost store’ operations leave on consumer trust in the jewellery industry, some scammers are willing to take things further, including stealing product photos and descriptions and promotional social media content.

Many ghost store scammers are willing to steal product photos, descriptions, and promotional social media content.

The Origins Opal account was created in September 2023 under the name ‘Sobuj’ and was later changed to Origins Opal in November 2024.

The website and social media of this scammer exhibit many of the typical hallmarks of a ‘ghost store’ scammer, including closing down sales, extreme discounting, and the use of AI-generated imagery and fraudulent backgrounds.

Many scammers use an ‘army’ of fake accounts to lend authenticity to a post or page.

A closer examination of the Facebook accounts endorsing the scammer's profile revealed repetitive posts seemingly linked to another scam.