I find Amazon’s response to being informed about this “incident” particularly shocking.<p>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?<p>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?<p>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.
We are not given enough details to know what the criminal’s intent was.<p>It does look more like a card cashout method than a laundering method, two very different things.<p>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.<p>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.<p>SSNs and easily-photoshopped ID scans as primary verification methods are the two biggest weak links in the ecosystem right now IMO.<p>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.
> (...) 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.<p>How come having someone's SSN is still enough to do stuff like this? It's not a secret number.
I found this part interesting<p><i>“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.”</i><p>If they are impersonating him, I see no reason why Amazon couldn't let him know where "his" money was sent.
This comment by Andre is enlightening:<p>> 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.
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.<p>It is probably a problem of incentive because they are still making these sales.
the root of all of these kinds of scams is the same:<p>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<p>there is literally no way to secure your identity if you've ever used a service requiring your SSN
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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...
Money laundering and CV padding.<p>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.<p>The book is artificially elongated and full of advise scraped from tutorials. The code snippets are pretty much non-existent. Overall garbage.<p>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".<p>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.<p>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.<p>Handcrafted bespoke user interfaces - seriously, who unironically puts this on their contracting business LinkedIn profile? Who buys this babble (besides the technically oblivious managers)?
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?<p>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?
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.
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.)<p>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.