There are one or more platforms in the middle. In the US, if you report a fraud your credit card and Amazon will both go out of their way to refund you (Amazon

There are one or more platforms in the middle. In the US, if you report a fraud your credit card and Amazon will both go out of their way to refund you (Amazon might require a return but will have options to make that free if they do). Other platforms are similar. You, as a consumer, don't have any major problems from the fraud unless you needed a performant device with low delivery times. Whether the fraudster has somebody's dollars varies, but for that kind of a scheme they're able to just hide in plain sight. If 100 people don't test the device (and it works for months or years) and 1 person does, they have a 5-star rating and can just eat the cost of returns. Even if everyone on Hacker News started testing devices it wouldn't make a dent in fraudulent profits.