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Money Laundering via Author Impersonation on Amazon

210 points by gatsby 9y ago

willvarfar 9y ago
This comment by Andre is enlightening: > I know how this is done. It is the best way to launder bitcoin revenue generated from all kinds of illegal activities. They go to Giftly or Gyft and by Amazon gift cards for the bitcoin. Then they just pay themselves. That is the only way to not get your account closed. It is not credit card fraud!!! Gift cards are always under the radar on Amazon.
- bobcostas55 9y ago
  ...aren't those gift cards you buy with bitcoin bought with stolen CCs?
  - jacobush 9y ago
    I guess, but the scam is robust because they "outsource" the illegality of stolen credit cards to the person selling the gift card. Pretty insidious.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      Defrauding a seller with stolen credit cards is despicable. I know someone who had an online startup selling tickets and was massively defrauded by foreign hackers with stolen credit cards. He was personally liable for the losses and it ended up bankrupting him. His life was a downward spiral after that, resulting in divorce, losing his home, and ultimately committing suicide.
      - jlgaddis 9y ago
        Why was he personally liable?
        majjam 9y ago
        I suspect its because he won't have setup the company as one with limited liability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability the result being that when people sued, they sued him personally rather than the company.
        morogop 9y ago
        or he had it as an LLC, but made a mistake along the way that pierced the corporate veil. Or as a small business, he was just straight-up forced to pierce the corporate veil. (banks do this to small biz all the time).
        matte_black 9y ago
        It's not always so simple when you're a small company owned by one person. Even if you have an LLC, if you run into significant money problems someone with enough resources WILL come after you personally.
        rbcgerard 9y ago
        More than likely he borrowed money and despite the entity structure, personally guaranteed it (which is typical for most small business loans)
        phil21 9y ago
        If you are a small business with no significant assets or revenue - say you are plugging away making $4k/mo scraping by - you will likely not be getting a merchant account without a personal financial guarantee. The corporate veil is mostly a fiction for small bootstrapped startups without initial seed capital.
      - maaaats 9y ago
        Remember reading here about how candy japan being hit by something similar. [0] [0]: https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237697
      - chatmasta 9y ago
        What's crazy is it only takes one bad actor to cause problems like this. Often fraudsters will just use one website to "test" if a card is good, by using it to make a small purchase. If it goes through, the card is good. One fraudster might do this 100 times on a small site. The merchant is liable for the chargebacks that will come within 30 days, and each chargeback typically costs $15. Additionally, if the percent of chargebacks as a total of all transactions goes over 2%, the merchant account provider will likely close the account due to risk.
  - willvarfar 9y ago
    Or the ransoms people pay for decrypting their harddrives etc. Lots of ways to get bitcoin and want to get cash.
  - justonepost 9y ago
    Drug dealers profiting from bitcoin need to get their money out too, ya know.
  - nocobot 9y ago
    Gyft appears to me to be a legit business (I only had a short look at their website). Buying gift cards at regular prices and then selling them with a small markup while providing anonymity for your customers seems plausible.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - masklinn 9y ago
    The bitcoins could also come from drug sales, extorsion, betting, fencing stolen property, …
- nocobot 9y ago
  Unless I'm missing something this doesn't really seem to launder the money. Sure you have converted bitcoin to cash but the cash still doesn't look like legitimate income if you don't sell the books under your own name (which they clearly don't). So wouldn't it be easier to just sell bitcoin on exchanges like localbitcoin?
  - tantalor 9y ago
    > the cash still doesn't look like legitimate income It would if you used your real identity for the "book" sales instead of fraudulent id. Then the proceeds are legitimate. Govt would have to prove you faked the sales, which is easy to hide.
    - jonwachob91 9y ago
      It also doesn't seem that far fetched to actually write a 60 page book. One topic per book (civil war, computers, carbons, whatever) copy and paste wikipedia articles on various points related to the topic, some crappy pics, and bam, one day of work and you've got something you could claim to be a real book if anyone started investigating.
      - tantalor 9y ago
        Or just publish one of these: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Guitar.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Guitar.p...
    - arctica27 9y ago
      I don't think it would be that easy to hide. It would be easy to dragnet and find suspects by getting Amazon to report % of purchases by gift card by author, and then following up manually with a few customers should be enough to filter out any false positives and snare the scammers.
      - tantalor 9y ago
Talyen42 9y ago
the root of all of these kinds of scams is the same: your "identity" is nothing more than your SSN/TIN, which is already on a thousand lists for sale on the dark web, and forever will be there is literally no way to secure your identity if you've ever used a service requiring your SSN
- alex_hitchins 9y ago
  Am I correct in the understanding that in the US, lots of institutions/services/utility's ask for your SSN so it's common to be passing it across to folks, yet with this information someone could very easily take over your identity and cause much legal issues?
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Yes. Often your date of birth is also needed but, of course, that's not hard to acquire either.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    yes, but that is okay because they keep your SSN and other personal private information in a secure computer. /s
    - chrisper 9y ago
      And because the form has a lock icon. So you know it's safe.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    Yes. Every company that uses it treats it like some kind of super secret password. Which is obviously BS, because you've already given it out to a bunch of other companies.
    - alex_hitchins 9y ago
      How very strange. Surely something will have to change soon with the Equifax hack etc. We have something similar over here, an National Insurance number but it's only needed for employers or claiming benefits.
maaaats 9y ago
> (...) he’d never given Amazon his Social Security number. But the fraudster evidently had, and that was apparently enough to convince Amazon that the imposter was him. How come having someone's SSN is still enough to do stuff like this? It's not a secret number.
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  It's the US, where everything is always done in the worst possible way.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    I don't know man. 5guys and in n out are pretty good.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - RhodesianHunter 9y ago
    “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” -Churchill
- forgotmypw 9y ago
  The problems just haven't reached critical mass yet, and it's still cheaper to ignore/bandaid than overhauling the system.
rando444 9y ago
I found this part interesting “They say all they can do at this point is send me a letter acknowledging than I’m disputing ever having received the funds, because they said they couldn’t prove I didn’t receive the funds. So I told them, ‘If you’re saying you can’t say whether I did receive the funds, tell me where they went?’ And they said, “Oh, no, we can’t do that.’ So I can’t clear myself and they won’t clear me.” If they are impersonating him, I see no reason why Amazon couldn't let him know where "his" money was sent.
- chibg10 9y ago
  Because giving out bank account information to strangers who are known not to own the account is a bad idea. Just because it's a suspected scammer doesn't mean that it's suddenly okay for Amazon to out his bank account info and leave themselves liable in case this guy (Reames) counter-steals the thief's identity.
  - rando444 9y ago
    I see where I made the error assuming the person had control of the account, but just for reference, it is not possible to steal someone's identity using their bank account number. This is just an identifier of an account. In my country bank account transfers are the most common way to transfer money. I do it for random transactions, repaying people who bought me lunch, and all sorts of things. Anyone will give you their bank account number if you ask for it, and most people have theirs memorized. The only thing someone could do if they got a hold of your account number would be that they can now send you money.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      > The only thing someone could do if they got a hold of your account number would be that they can now send you money. Or withdraw all your money, if your account is drawn on a US (and many other countries) bank.
      - astura 9y ago
TheLostOne 9y ago
In cases like this from my expierence don't argue with Amazon, they will not help in any. Turn it over to the police immediatly.
TheLostOne 9y ago
Ebay/Paypal used sending 1c to a back account to verify your identity. Amazon never did, they happily take money from any account entered in their system with public data.
seren 9y ago
I am surprised Amazon can not detect fake books, this is essentially the same than spam detection, or at least flag them from a human review. It is probably a problem of incentive because they are still making these sales.
- concerned_user 9y ago
  So what? Those scammers will just take chapters from multiple different books slap them together and there you go, same auto generated book but with non-gibberish text.
  - jeffmould 9y ago
    This, in my opinion, would be even easier for Amazon to detect than gibberish sentences pieced together. There are plenty of companies that specialize in plagiarism detection (i.e. TurnItIn, VeriCite) that would be able to detect copied text quickly and efficiently. Amazon already has easy access to thousands of books that detecting copies of chapters would be a no-brainer for them.
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  Why would they? Amazon still makes money. Unless the government takes them to task for money laundering, they'll continue to do what makes them money.
elmo2you 9y ago
I find Amazon’s response to being informed about this “incident” particularly shocking. Based on the information presented on Krebs’ blog, it should be obvious to Amazon that this is not just a case of a client dispute, but a situation involving a number of serious crimes. Considering how Amazon’s own platform facilitates these crimes, should their reluctance to assist this particular victim not open them up for a liability claims, maybe even for complicity in illegal conduct? Taking it one step further, Amazon appears to have gained, and still gain a significant percentage from each of these transaction. In plain words: Amazon itself gained profits from criminal proceeds. It also appears to not be bothered all that much with structurally eliminating this practice. Doesn't that make Amazon itself a criminal organization, by definition? Unless Amazon puts an immediate stop to all this, and distance itself from all profits so far made on it, why would it not be branded a criminal organization? Because they provide jobs? Because they provide innovative new business opportunities? Because they also gain profits though legal ways? Those same things can be argued for many criminal organizations, even including the Italian mafia.
- chatmasta 9y ago
  Indeed. It looks like pretty cut-and-dry failure of KYC compliance. When acting as a marketplace, Amazon is a money transmitter and needs to follow KYC procedure for all sellers receiving funds. It seems like their KYC is very loose, to say the least.
  - phil21 9y ago
    Unfortunately as I age and gain experience in this industry, I've come to the conclusion rules like that do not apply to companies the size and breadth of Amazon. They may get a slap on the wrist, but if a small company did this the principles involved would be in prison.
    - coldcode 9y ago
      Perhaps a day in jail would make Bezos care. Money laundering is currently a big deal. Using Amazon to launder money is no different than selling stolen merchandise to a pawn shop.
dalbasal 9y ago
Seems to be both identity theft and money laundering going on. Identity theft is a crime, but idk how much liability Amazon has. At least, I don't think there are specific/explicit rules about how this works. There probably is some case, referencing general laws about assisting or not preventing crimes or whatnot. ...I think. Money laundering, OTOH... There is lots of legislation, regulation, enforcement... 99% of what falls under these is not money laundering, the plain English kind. It's measures to prevent tax avoidance, funding unsavouries and such. I imagine that bonafide laundering would be treated very seriously by authorities, but also banks and financial institutions Amazon work with.
buildbuildbuild 9y ago
We are not given enough details to know what the criminal’s intent was. It does look more like a card cashout method than a laundering method, two very different things. A common cashout pairing is Payoneer + Amazon/Fiverr/Upwork/etc. Payoneer allows almost anyone around the world to get a debit card which can be ACH loaded with proceeds of many marketplace partners including Amazon. You can walk up to an ATM and withdraw cash quickly after selling to “yourself” on Amazon. Their AML/KYC methods are a joke. All it takes is one weak link in the AML chain for identity thieves to succeed, and due to the unstandardized and nebulous nature of current AML laws, there will always be a weak link especially as companies struggle to scale quickly. SSNs and easily-photoshopped ID scans as primary verification methods are the two biggest weak links in the ecosystem right now IMO. SSNs as passwords should be illegal at this point. Homework: go see how long it takes you to buy your own SSN on the darknet.
- phil21 9y ago
  > Homework: go see how long it takes you to buy your own SSN on the darknet. Heck, you don't even need to do that. Plenty of perfectly legal services you can sign up for as a PI, debt collector, whatever. You don't even need an information leak to have hit you. If you've participated in the modern economy, your SSN is trivially available for less than $30 via (arguably) legal means. Anyone that doesn't treat their SSN as public information these days is living in a fantasy world. It's been this way for quite a long time, and I've never been too worried about my info floating around on the darkweb - the scammers weren't using those sources for the most part anyways. The only leak I really thought was a big deal in recent times is Equifax - since that leak very likely was the whole burrito. That very likely escalated the "identity theft" war quite a bit.
Bitcoin_McPonzi 9y ago
Amazon is rapidly turning into eBay at its worst. It's very hard to buy things there. I used to send my 85 year old mom to Amazon to buy things, but she has trouble distinguishing name-brand items sold and fulfilled by Amazon from scammy clones. (And those pop-ups for extended warranties aren't good either.) The fact that they let fake customer support numbers appear in Amazon hosted forums is reprehensible. And facilitating identity theft and money laundering seems downright criminal. I hope this victim can get the attention of a prosecutor.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing Previous discussion including some firsthand experience from sellers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015
  - camus2 9y ago
    > It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing It's called fraud. Some people here call it "scaling" but it's just good old fraud at scale.
  - dabernathy89 9y ago
    Yep. Just a couple weeks ago we bought Chemex coffee filters - the "Amazon's Choice" ones! We got a counterfeit that didn't even try to replicate the actual product (it was just sheets of tissue paper in the completely wrong shape). Looking at the reviews, we weren't the only ones who got these either. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017OFOP68/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_c_YofHAb9294KX5 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017OFOP68/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_c_Yo... They've apparently since taken off the "Amazon's Choice" label here.
- KarenSatantsby 9y ago
  I know i dont trust Amazon. I go to the product website if I can then Newegg then Walmart.com - Amazon is last. Newegg is actually a great place for lots of different stuff. Amazon is ikky Because of what you say its not worth it. - But my dad loves it because he lives in a rural area and has free shipping and reads his kindle and has lots and lots of money - not me I need to look after my resources and I have not had a wonderful experience with Amazon - I mean why get a board game from Amazon if you can get it from the publisher or another site that is not as creepy. There are amazing German web sites. it really is a crappy USA company.. There are less crappy companies
ergothus 9y ago
One thing I've not seen mentioned here is how Amazon created an opportunity for fraud by making their customer support number harder to find. This is a common tactic - heck, some sites require you to do a knowledge base search before giving you any means to do direct contact. Keeping humans around to answer calls is expensive so companies nudge customers towards passive support. All of which creates an opportunity for fraudsters to make their fake contact info easier to find. I wonder how many fraudulent numbers for Google support exist...
- username223 9y ago
  I suspect many people deal with potential customer service numbers the way I do: don't even bother. Even if you can find it, you have to fight through 5-6 layers of menus, only to be connected with some low-paid contractor trying to read a script. I haven't tried to contact Amazon's customer service, and can't even imagine trying. Basically, if your problem is bad enough, try to make it a PR problem online. If it's not, too bad.
  - ergothus 9y ago
    Sure...but can any business continue making their support hard to find if scams start to pose as your support and are easier for customers to find?
pc86 9y ago
Why do you need to use someone else's social if you're using it for money laundering? Can't you just sell a book under your own social for that much? Or hell, sell a used copy of an actual book for $2,000 or something? I don't understand how the received money is clean if it's attached to someone else's social. If the thief is audited they can't show legitimacy of that cash, can they?
cpncrunch 9y ago
The best solution would seem to be reporting the fraud and money laundering to the police.
a3n 9y ago
Seems like if Amazon won't issue a corrected 1099, the victim's next stops should be his state AG, the IRS, FBI, and/or similar. A crime's been committed, Amazon is getting 40% and refusing to do anything about it.
zamber 9y ago
Money laundering and CV padding. Currently working with a guy that has a React book on Amazon. 0$ on Kindle, 22.50$ paperback so at least you can see for yourself what quality it is. The book is artificially elongated and full of advise scraped from tutorials. The code snippets are pretty much non-existent. Overall garbage. Recruiters don't read through the bullshit so it's a good sell "This guy wrote a book on the thing!". Doesn't matter that the guy produces spaghetti garbage with complexity of 36. Contracting high-life. As the old saying goes "Worse is better". Of course laying off the guy would not pass. What would the client say!? Let's make him the lead on the front-end part and eventually push the blame on him once the client realizes what a steaming pile of bullshit they've got on their hands. As a cherry on top there's managerial padding between US and EMEA departments of the client so probably they'll go off to the sunset with another bullshit entry on their LinkedIn profiles. Handcrafted bespoke user interfaces - seriously, who unironically puts this on their contracting business LinkedIn profile? Who buys this babble (besides the technically oblivious managers)?

210 points by gatsby 9y ago

This comment by Andre is enlightening: > I know how this is done. It is the best way to launder bitcoin revenue generated from all kinds of illegal activities. They go to Giftly or Gyft and by Amazon gift cards for the bitcoin. Then they just pay themselves. That is the only way to not get your account closed. It is not credit card fraud!!! Gift cards are always under the radar on Amazon.

bobcostas55 9y ago
...aren't those gift cards you buy with bitcoin bought with stolen CCs?
- jacobush 9y ago
  I guess, but the scam is robust because they "outsource" the illegality of stolen credit cards to the person selling the gift card. Pretty insidious.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Defrauding a seller with stolen credit cards is despicable. I know someone who had an online startup selling tickets and was massively defrauded by foreign hackers with stolen credit cards. He was personally liable for the losses and it ended up bankrupting him. His life was a downward spiral after that, resulting in divorce, losing his home, and ultimately committing suicide.
    - jlgaddis 9y ago
      Why was he personally liable?
      - majjam 9y ago
        I suspect its because he won't have setup the company as one with limited liability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability the result being that when people sued, they sued him personally rather than the company.
        morogop 9y ago
        or he had it as an LLC, but made a mistake along the way that pierced the corporate veil. Or as a small business, he was just straight-up forced to pierce the corporate veil. (banks do this to small biz all the time).
        matte_black 9y ago
        It's not always so simple when you're a small company owned by one person. Even if you have an LLC, if you run into significant money problems someone with enough resources WILL come after you personally.
      - rbcgerard 9y ago
        More than likely he borrowed money and despite the entity structure, personally guaranteed it (which is typical for most small business loans)
      - phil21 9y ago
        If you are a small business with no significant assets or revenue - say you are plugging away making $4k/mo scraping by - you will likely not be getting a merchant account without a personal financial guarantee. The corporate veil is mostly a fiction for small bootstrapped startups without initial seed capital.
    - maaaats 9y ago
      Remember reading here about how candy japan being hit by something similar. [0] [0]: https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit-with-credit-card-fraud https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/candy-japan-hit... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237697
    - chatmasta 9y ago
      What's crazy is it only takes one bad actor to cause problems like this. Often fraudsters will just use one website to "test" if a card is good, by using it to make a small purchase. If it goes through, the card is good. One fraudster might do this 100 times on a small site. The merchant is liable for the chargebacks that will come within 30 days, and each chargeback typically costs $15. Additionally, if the percent of chargebacks as a total of all transactions goes over 2%, the merchant account provider will likely close the account due to risk.
- willvarfar 9y ago
  Or the ransoms people pay for decrypting their harddrives etc. Lots of ways to get bitcoin and want to get cash.
- justonepost 9y ago
  Drug dealers profiting from bitcoin need to get their money out too, ya know.
- nocobot 9y ago
  Gyft appears to me to be a legit business (I only had a short look at their website). Buying gift cards at regular prices and then selling them with a small markup while providing anonymity for your customers seems plausible.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- masklinn 9y ago
  The bitcoins could also come from drug sales, extorsion, betting, fencing stolen property, …
nocobot 9y ago
Unless I'm missing something this doesn't really seem to launder the money. Sure you have converted bitcoin to cash but the cash still doesn't look like legitimate income if you don't sell the books under your own name (which they clearly don't). So wouldn't it be easier to just sell bitcoin on exchanges like localbitcoin?
- tantalor 9y ago
  > the cash still doesn't look like legitimate income It would if you used your real identity for the "book" sales instead of fraudulent id. Then the proceeds are legitimate. Govt would have to prove you faked the sales, which is easy to hide.
  - jonwachob91 9y ago
    It also doesn't seem that far fetched to actually write a 60 page book. One topic per book (civil war, computers, carbons, whatever) copy and paste wikipedia articles on various points related to the topic, some crappy pics, and bam, one day of work and you've got something you could claim to be a real book if anyone started investigating.
    - tantalor 9y ago
      Or just publish one of these: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guitar https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Guitar.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Guitar.p...
  - arctica27 9y ago
    I don't think it would be that easy to hide. It would be easy to dragnet and find suspects by getting Amazon to report % of purchases by gift card by author, and then following up manually with a few customers should be enough to filter out any false positives and snare the scammers.
    - tantalor 9y ago

Talyen42 9y ago

the root of all of these kinds of scams is the same: your "identity" is nothing more than your SSN/TIN, which is already on a thousand lists for sale on the dark web, and forever will be there is literally no way to secure your identity if you've ever used a service requiring your SSN

alex_hitchins 9y ago
Am I correct in the understanding that in the US, lots of institutions/services/utility's ask for your SSN so it's common to be passing it across to folks, yet with this information someone could very easily take over your identity and cause much legal issues?
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Yes. Often your date of birth is also needed but, of course, that's not hard to acquire either.
- itronitron 9y ago
  yes, but that is okay because they keep your SSN and other personal private information in a secure computer. /s
  - chrisper 9y ago
    And because the form has a lock icon. So you know it's safe.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  Yes. Every company that uses it treats it like some kind of super secret password. Which is obviously BS, because you've already given it out to a bunch of other companies.
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    How very strange. Surely something will have to change soon with the Equifax hack etc. We have something similar over here, an National Insurance number but it's only needed for employers or claiming benefits.

maaaats 9y ago

> (...) he’d never given Amazon his Social Security number. But the fraudster evidently had, and that was apparently enough to convince Amazon that the imposter was him. How come having someone's SSN is still enough to do stuff like this? It's not a secret number.

Double_a_92 9y ago
It's the US, where everything is always done in the worst possible way.
- chrisper 9y ago
  I don't know man. 5guys and in n out are pretty good.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- RhodesianHunter 9y ago
  “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” -Churchill
forgotmypw 9y ago
The problems just haven't reached critical mass yet, and it's still cheaper to ignore/bandaid than overhauling the system.

rando444 9y ago

I found this part interesting “They say all they can do at this point is send me a letter acknowledging than I’m disputing ever having received the funds, because they said they couldn’t prove I didn’t receive the funds. So I told them, ‘If you’re saying you can’t say whether I did receive the funds, tell me where they went?’ And they said, “Oh, no, we can’t do that.’ So I can’t clear myself and they won’t clear me.” If they are impersonating him, I see no reason why Amazon couldn't let him know where "his" money was sent.

chibg10 9y ago
Because giving out bank account information to strangers who are known not to own the account is a bad idea. Just because it's a suspected scammer doesn't mean that it's suddenly okay for Amazon to out his bank account info and leave themselves liable in case this guy (Reames) counter-steals the thief's identity.
- rando444 9y ago
  I see where I made the error assuming the person had control of the account, but just for reference, it is not possible to steal someone's identity using their bank account number. This is just an identifier of an account. In my country bank account transfers are the most common way to transfer money. I do it for random transactions, repaying people who bought me lunch, and all sorts of things. Anyone will give you their bank account number if you ask for it, and most people have theirs memorized. The only thing someone could do if they got a hold of your account number would be that they can now send you money.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > The only thing someone could do if they got a hold of your account number would be that they can now send you money. Or withdraw all your money, if your account is drawn on a US (and many other countries) bank.
    - astura 9y ago

TheLostOne 9y ago

In cases like this from my expierence don't argue with Amazon, they will not help in any. Turn it over to the police immediatly.

TheLostOne 9y ago

Ebay/Paypal used sending 1c to a back account to verify your identity. Amazon never did, they happily take money from any account entered in their system with public data.

seren 9y ago

I am surprised Amazon can not detect fake books, this is essentially the same than spam detection, or at least flag them from a human review. It is probably a problem of incentive because they are still making these sales.

concerned_user 9y ago
So what? Those scammers will just take chapters from multiple different books slap them together and there you go, same auto generated book but with non-gibberish text.
- jeffmould 9y ago
  This, in my opinion, would be even easier for Amazon to detect than gibberish sentences pieced together. There are plenty of companies that specialize in plagiarism detection (i.e. TurnItIn, VeriCite) that would be able to detect copied text quickly and efficiently. Amazon already has easy access to thousands of books that detecting copies of chapters would be a no-brainer for them.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
Why would they? Amazon still makes money. Unless the government takes them to task for money laundering, they'll continue to do what makes them money.

elmo2you 9y ago

I find Amazon’s response to being informed about this “incident” particularly shocking. Based on the information presented on Krebs’ blog, it should be obvious to Amazon that this is not just a case of a client dispute, but a situation involving a number of serious crimes. Considering how Amazon’s own platform facilitates these crimes, should their reluctance to assist this particular victim not open them up for a liability claims, maybe even for complicity in illegal conduct? Taking it one step further, Amazon appears to have gained, and still gain a significant percentage from each of these transaction. In plain words: Amazon itself gained profits from criminal proceeds. It also appears to not be bothered all that much with structurally eliminating this practice. Doesn't that make Amazon itself a criminal organization, by definition? Unless Amazon puts an immediate stop to all this, and distance itself from all profits so far made on it, why would it not be branded a criminal organization? Because they provide jobs? Because they provide innovative new business opportunities? Because they also gain profits though legal ways? Those same things can be argued for many criminal organizations, even including the Italian mafia.

chatmasta 9y ago
Indeed. It looks like pretty cut-and-dry failure of KYC compliance. When acting as a marketplace, Amazon is a money transmitter and needs to follow KYC procedure for all sellers receiving funds. It seems like their KYC is very loose, to say the least.
- phil21 9y ago
  Unfortunately as I age and gain experience in this industry, I've come to the conclusion rules like that do not apply to companies the size and breadth of Amazon. They may get a slap on the wrist, but if a small company did this the principles involved would be in prison.
  - coldcode 9y ago
    Perhaps a day in jail would make Bezos care. Money laundering is currently a big deal. Using Amazon to launder money is no different than selling stolen merchandise to a pawn shop.

dalbasal 9y ago

Seems to be both identity theft and money laundering going on. Identity theft is a crime, but idk how much liability Amazon has. At least, I don't think there are specific/explicit rules about how this works. There probably is some case, referencing general laws about assisting or not preventing crimes or whatnot. ...I think. Money laundering, OTOH... There is lots of legislation, regulation, enforcement... 99% of what falls under these is not money laundering, the plain English kind. It's measures to prevent tax avoidance, funding unsavouries and such. I imagine that bonafide laundering would be treated very seriously by authorities, but also banks and financial institutions Amazon work with.

buildbuildbuild 9y ago

We are not given enough details to know what the criminal’s intent was. It does look more like a card cashout method than a laundering method, two very different things. A common cashout pairing is Payoneer + Amazon/Fiverr/Upwork/etc. Payoneer allows almost anyone around the world to get a debit card which can be ACH loaded with proceeds of many marketplace partners including Amazon. You can walk up to an ATM and withdraw cash quickly after selling to “yourself” on Amazon. Their AML/KYC methods are a joke. All it takes is one weak link in the AML chain for identity thieves to succeed, and due to the unstandardized and nebulous nature of current AML laws, there will always be a weak link especially as companies struggle to scale quickly. SSNs and easily-photoshopped ID scans as primary verification methods are the two biggest weak links in the ecosystem right now IMO. SSNs as passwords should be illegal at this point. Homework: go see how long it takes you to buy your own SSN on the darknet.

phil21 9y ago
> Homework: go see how long it takes you to buy your own SSN on the darknet. Heck, you don't even need to do that. Plenty of perfectly legal services you can sign up for as a PI, debt collector, whatever. You don't even need an information leak to have hit you. If you've participated in the modern economy, your SSN is trivially available for less than $30 via (arguably) legal means. Anyone that doesn't treat their SSN as public information these days is living in a fantasy world. It's been this way for quite a long time, and I've never been too worried about my info floating around on the darkweb - the scammers weren't using those sources for the most part anyways. The only leak I really thought was a big deal in recent times is Equifax - since that leak very likely was the whole burrito. That very likely escalated the "identity theft" war quite a bit.

Bitcoin_McPonzi 9y ago

Amazon is rapidly turning into eBay at its worst. It's very hard to buy things there. I used to send my 85 year old mom to Amazon to buy things, but she has trouble distinguishing name-brand items sold and fulfilled by Amazon from scammy clones. (And those pop-ups for extended warranties aren't good either.) The fact that they let fake customer support numbers appear in Amazon hosted forums is reprehensible. And facilitating identity theft and money laundering seems downright criminal. I hope this victim can get the attention of a prosecutor.

wlesieutre 9y ago
It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing Previous discussion including some firsthand experience from sellers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015
- camus2 9y ago
  > It's worse than that, the authentic name-brand listing can still ship scammy clones instead because Amazon aggregates the listing from multiple sellers and pretends they're all the same thing It's called fraud. Some people here call it "scaling" but it's just good old fraud at scale.
- dabernathy89 9y ago
  Yep. Just a couple weeks ago we bought Chemex coffee filters - the "Amazon's Choice" ones! We got a counterfeit that didn't even try to replicate the actual product (it was just sheets of tissue paper in the completely wrong shape). Looking at the reviews, we weren't the only ones who got these either. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017OFOP68/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_c_YofHAb9294KX5 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017OFOP68/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_c_Yo... They've apparently since taken off the "Amazon's Choice" label here.
KarenSatantsby 9y ago
I know i dont trust Amazon. I go to the product website if I can then Newegg then Walmart.com - Amazon is last. Newegg is actually a great place for lots of different stuff. Amazon is ikky Because of what you say its not worth it. - But my dad loves it because he lives in a rural area and has free shipping and reads his kindle and has lots and lots of money - not me I need to look after my resources and I have not had a wonderful experience with Amazon - I mean why get a board game from Amazon if you can get it from the publisher or another site that is not as creepy. There are amazing German web sites. it really is a crappy USA company.. There are less crappy companies

ergothus 9y ago

One thing I've not seen mentioned here is how Amazon created an opportunity for fraud by making their customer support number harder to find. This is a common tactic - heck, some sites require you to do a knowledge base search before giving you any means to do direct contact. Keeping humans around to answer calls is expensive so companies nudge customers towards passive support. All of which creates an opportunity for fraudsters to make their fake contact info easier to find. I wonder how many fraudulent numbers for Google support exist...

username223 9y ago
I suspect many people deal with potential customer service numbers the way I do: don't even bother. Even if you can find it, you have to fight through 5-6 layers of menus, only to be connected with some low-paid contractor trying to read a script. I haven't tried to contact Amazon's customer service, and can't even imagine trying. Basically, if your problem is bad enough, try to make it a PR problem online. If it's not, too bad.
- ergothus 9y ago
  Sure...but can any business continue making their support hard to find if scams start to pose as your support and are easier for customers to find?

pc86 9y ago

Why do you need to use someone else's social if you're using it for money laundering? Can't you just sell a book under your own social for that much? Or hell, sell a used copy of an actual book for $2,000 or something? I don't understand how the received money is clean if it's attached to someone else's social. If the thief is audited they can't show legitimacy of that cash, can they?

cpncrunch 9y ago

The best solution would seem to be reporting the fraud and money laundering to the police.

a3n 9y ago

Seems like if Amazon won't issue a corrected 1099, the victim's next stops should be his state AG, the IRS, FBI, and/or similar. A crime's been committed, Amazon is getting 40% and refusing to do anything about it.

zamber 9y ago

Money laundering and CV padding. Currently working with a guy that has a React book on Amazon. 0$ on Kindle, 22.50$ paperback so at least you can see for yourself what quality it is. The book is artificially elongated and full of advise scraped from tutorials. The code snippets are pretty much non-existent. Overall garbage. Recruiters don't read through the bullshit so it's a good sell "This guy wrote a book on the thing!". Doesn't matter that the guy produces spaghetti garbage with complexity of 36. Contracting high-life. As the old saying goes "Worse is better". Of course laying off the guy would not pass. What would the client say!? Let's make him the lead on the front-end part and eventually push the blame on him once the client realizes what a steaming pile of bullshit they've got on their hands. As a cherry on top there's managerial padding between US and EMEA departments of the client so probably they'll go off to the sunset with another bullshit entry on their LinkedIn profiles. Handcrafted bespoke user interfaces - seriously, who unironically puts this on their contracting business LinkedIn profile? Who buys this babble (besides the technically oblivious managers)?