> 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.
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.
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.
Previous discussion including some firsthand experience from sellers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13926015
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.
It's called fraud. Some people here call it "scaling" but it's just good old fraud at scale.
1. Amazon Logistics delivery sucks and I hate them so much.
2. When you actually look, Amazon is no longer price competitive with big box retailers on a lot of products in a lot of areas.
3. I can get my stuff today rather than in ??? + 2 days.
4. I can actually see the stuff in person, and assess quality and size.
5. Much smaller counterfeit problem.
6. I'm afraid of Amazon getting too dominant in the retail space, so I feel good about sending business to its competitors.
I try to only go to Amazon when I'm buying something weird that I don't know how to buy elsewhere.
I travel frequntly to China/Philippines/SG and you need to go in person to buy random crap. I hate it. Lazada is the Asian Amazon and it is a total crapshoot.
I never complained about Amazon, whenever I have a issue it's always remedied correctly, returns are absolute and money is refunded.
Lazada tries to play games, tries to say "change of mind is not a valid reason of excuse" or worse it's bait and switch. A picture of a bookshelf with pictures by a palm tree, what's delivered is a doll house toy.
I hate online shopping in Asia. Japan is the only exception because of Amazon and Japan commitment to customer service.
When there's something I want, I might research it on Amazon, then I go to the manufacturer's site and find an authorized reseller to buy it from.
I’ve been using Fake Spot to get any non name brand item[1]. The only issue is now there are straight counterfeits instead of reply cheap knock offs. I recently learned of the all the counterfeit SD cards when I bought some for my Pis. A google search brings up examples on many forums and blogs.
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.
They may get a slap on the wrist, but if a small company did this the principles involved would be in prison.
When I read the Krebs article I was struck by how similar it was to the way in which World of Warcraft Gold sellers would "launder" their gold by sending it through the auction house. In that case they would have their customers put up a specific worthless item for a high fee on the AH and then one of the gold farmer accounts would come along and buy it. As a 'legit' transaction it was hard for Blizzard to catch.
No doubt this is a pretty ancient scheme, you could use a swap meet for example to launder a lot of cash this way as well. Amazon just makes it easier. Of course it would be easier still if Amazon accepted blockchain currencies. Then you could create your own mixer without any work at all. :-) That makes me wonder if there were people selling silly things on Silk Road back in the day for large amounts of coin.
Also, fairly obviously, Amazon is not criminally liable because when the transactions happened they were, as far as they knew, simply selling books legally. Amazon had no criminal intent. This is the big difference.
Money laundering is also a difficult thing to deal with, since there are 'tipping off' crimes a lot of places, so you are not allowed to reveal that you are investigating.
Just do it to the HQ on a day when Jeff is in the office - they will get the message
“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.
If someone uses "my" name (which is not actually "owned" by me; there is no law to prevent other people from using that name) to commit fraud then that is a matter for the people being defrauded and for the police. I can't expect to magically acquire police powers in order to investigate it myself.
I have the same mental reaction every time I read about someone trying to investigate a so-called "identity theft" in which their name was used. The whole concept of "identity theft" is extremely dodgy. From a practical point of view, I don't know what to advise.
So it seems like either the options are they sent him a 1099 by mistake, or they didn't, and they should therefore be able to say where the money was sent or help him access the 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.
Or withdraw all your money, if your account is drawn on a US (and many other countries) bank.
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
We have something similar over here, an National Insurance number but it's only needed for employers or claiming benefits.
Often your date of birth is also needed but, of course, that's not hard to acquire either.
How come having someone's SSN is still enough to do stuff like this? It's not a secret number.
It is probably a problem of incentive because they are still making these sales.
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...
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.
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 $30 via (arguably) legal means.
Anyone that doesn't treat their SSN as public information these days is living in a fantasy world. It's been this way for quite a long time, and I've never been too worried about my info floating around on the darkweb - the scammers weren't using those sources for the most part anyways.
The only leak I really thought was a big deal in recent times is Equifax - since that leak very likely was the whole burrito. That very likely escalated the "identity theft" war quite a bit.
Money laundering, OTOH... There is lots of legislation, regulation, enforcement... 99% of what falls under these is not money laundering, the plain English kind. It's measures to prevent tax avoidance, funding unsavouries and such. I imagine that bonafide laundering would be treated very seriously by authorities, but also banks and financial institutions Amazon work with.
Currently working with a guy that has a React book on Amazon. 0$ 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)?
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?
