[HN Gopher] Money laundering via author impersonation on Amazon?
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Money laundering via author impersonation on Amazon?
Author : nixtaken
Score : 130 points
Date : 2021-01-06 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| instead of using stolen credit cards wouldn't you instead have
| people bring their cash to get Amazon credit at a store, pay them
| 10 dollars per 450 dollars, they buy 'your' book with amazon
| credit, you've laundered 450 dollars for 10 dollars and some
| small expenses related to fake book generation etc.
| robalfonso wrote:
| Yes, exactly this. In addition you don't really need other
| people. If you have actual cash, buy gift cards in cash
| yourself then purchase online. If you can publish one book
| thats giberish, then you can publish dozens. And it's trivial
| to have a dozen amazon accounts/email combos to make the
| purchases with.
| zaroth wrote:
| Needs (2018)
| S_A_P wrote:
| I know Patrick Reams- he is a semi well known 'thought
| leader'/speaker in my industry. (Energy and Commodity markets)
| interesting to see what comes of this. What scares me is that
| somehow amazon knows where to send the 1099 but for whatever
| reason can't let him access his account or otherwise verify his
| financial institution details? This doesn't add up to me.
| Sujan wrote:
| (2018)
| nixtaken wrote:
| This still seems to be happening two years later. A person
| complained about seeing a book sold under their name for 550 USD.
| It contained gibberish and the sales were recorded as income to
| the IRS even though the owner of the account couldn't find out
| where the money went. Amazon wouldn't tell her who had opened a
| bank account in her name. I suppose they prefer to deal with such
| accounts behind the scenes.
| bserge wrote:
| It's happening on eBay for over a decade. Cheap trinkets and
| books for insane prices. Except for the impersonation part, I
| don't understand that tbh.
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| You avoid the taxes.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh, so any income reported won't be in your name? Clever,
| although you would also need bank accounts in others' name.
|
| Basically you'd need to use their whole identity, then
| withdraw the cash, possibly with fake IDs. Which is what
| they're doing, I guess.
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| You can open accounts online with ease. I posted about it
| before if you peek in my profile.
| choeger wrote:
| Not so much laundering the money, but rather obscuring the trail
| between the crime and the money. Laundering would come
| afterwards, I presume.
|
| Ok, so to pull this of, you need to:
|
| 1. have one or more stolen credit cards (obviously not on your
| name)
|
| 2. sell a book under a false name and buy it with the stolen
| credit card
|
| 3. have a bank account somewhere either under the false name from
| 2. or under some other false name or with a bank that will never
| give out your real name
|
| So the money is not "clean" because it now rests inside a bank
| account with a false name or a bank that does not cooperate with
| authorities. In any case it is still somewhat shady.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Sort of, especially if you can do a network of these.
|
| Amazon is an Everything store, including more easily washed
| financial products like gift cards that companies normally
| avoid for these reasons. I bet they can use their proceeds to
| exchange for these.
|
| I am curious if, by having a linked AWS account fueled by
| these, if there is a way to fully wash. E.g., bitcoin mining
| sets a super lossy floor.
|
| (We do graph analytics, where mining webs of transactions &
| their meta data is super interesting. Funny behaviors like
| these pop out as weird and extreme looking topologies when
| looking at them :)
| leetcrew wrote:
| how do you wash a gift card? I would assume the original
| method of payment for the card is logged somewhere. unless
| you can turn around and sell the gift card for cash really
| quick, you would be stuck holding evidence.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Yep, it's a time-sensitive market, as they're racing teams
| that will take days/weeks/months/never to catch up.
|
| * Dark web resellers: "20-50% take for X cards at Y $ in Z
| time" => additional jumbling (drop shipping, ...) and exit
| points (discounted $ for anonymous purchases for/during
| illegal activities)
|
| * Normal marketplaces: "$100 starbucks card, 10% off!"
|
| * Sell to physical retailers like small corner stores
|
| The approach & time will all impact % retained
|
| Edit: Here's a fun one, esp. when you think through all the
| ground operations / people in the drug supply chain:
| https://losspreventionmedia.com/gift-cards-have-become-a-
| com... . We work with a lot of sec/fraud teams, where I've
| repeatedly heard the story "At $100M-1B revenue the finance
| wizards started a gift cards program, but it became such a
| pain point that we canceled it."
| gruez wrote:
| >1. have one or more stolen credit cards (obviously not on your
| name)
|
| >2. sell a book under a false name and buy it with the stolen
| credit card
|
| That probably won't work too well because you'll have a
| unusually high chargeback rate on your account which would lead
| to your account getting flagged. You also eat the charge of
| chargebacks so that will eat into your profits. This could work
| as a part of a larger money laundering scheme though. eg. you
| have cash from selling drugs and you want to clean them, so you
| buy amazon gift cards with it and then use them to buy your
| ebook. now you have a clean source of income (selling ebooks)
| that the IRS would be satisfied with.
| mywittyname wrote:
| How can the IRS be satisfied when someone else's identity is
| being used? It doesn't make sense because the launderer is
| still in possession of dirty, now stolen, money.
|
| I'm guessing they are using the identify of "real" authors to
| bypass some kind of check Amazon has on new accounts selling
| books from unknown authors. Otherwise, what you're saying
| makes sense.
| gruez wrote:
| Not sure, maybe amazon doesn't require that the author be
| the same person as the entity selling the books (eg. LLC)?
| That way the IRS only really sees that Bob is getting his
| income from Bob's Books LLC, but unless they dig deeper
| they wouldn't know that Bob's Books LLC is impersonating
| Famous Writer.
|
| edit: this is incorrect, see thread below.
| mywittyname wrote:
| But Bob isn't getting the tax bill, which is my point.
| The tax bill is going to Famous Writer, who is most
| certainly going to contest the bill, and will probably
| win. Now the IRS doesn't get their money, so they are not
| satisfied.
|
| The whole idea behind money laundering is to actually pay
| the taxes on the ill-gotten gains to prevent you from
| being hit with charges relate to tax fraud, which are
| certain to stick.
|
| The fact that they are operating in this manner indicates
| that they are not scared of the IRS, probably because
| they are not operating in the USA. Thus, the clearly
| system isn't designed for tax evasion purposes. They must
| have some other reason for operating in such a manner.
| The only thing I can think of is they are trying to
| bypass Amazon checks. Presumably they used to just create
| a fictitious LLC to do this under the name of a random
| name, but eventually were foiled by Amazon's automated
| systems, so they changed tactics.
| gruez wrote:
| >But Bob isn't getting the tax bill, which is my point.
| The tax bill is going to Famous Writer, who is most
| certainly going to contest the bill, and will probably
| win. Now the IRS doesn't get their money, so they are not
| satisfied.
|
| Why would it go to Famous Writer? I skimmed the article
| and it only say the author on the product page is Famous
| Writer. If Famous Writer wrote it, but then signed over
| all the rights to Bob's Books LLC, then Famous Writer
| would be the author, but all the proceeds/tax bills will
| go to Bob's Books LLC.
|
| As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the
| first place? Probably because an unheard of author
| selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be
| suspicious, but if he was famous it would be less so.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Why would it go to Famous Writer?
|
| From the article:
|
| > Reames said Amazon refuses to send him a corrected
| 1099, or to discuss anything about the identity thief.
|
| The writer in question received a 1099, which states that
| he earned the proceeds from this book, and the IRS is
| going to require him to pay taxes on those earnings.
|
| > As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the
| first place? Probably because an unheard of author
| selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be
| suspicious,
|
| The author says this book made much more than any of his
| other books:
|
| > Reames is a credited author on Amazon by way of several
| commodity industry books, although none of them made
| anywhere near the amount Amazon is reporting to the
| Internal Revenue Service.
|
| They (the hackers) impersonated the author because they
| had access to his information via his publisher. Thus,
| they could bypass Amazon's normal vetting process for
| self-published books.
|
| This is a terrible money laundering scheme (since it
| doesn't actually result in legitimate money), but it's a
| very good theft scheme.
| csomar wrote:
| I don't think IRS is your issue. (after all, the IRS taxes
| criminal income). His issue is access to the banking
| infrastructure, which can be difficult if he has lots of
| cash, or money sitting offshore. He might not even care about
| the IRS or the US, but just needs a "pass-through" to another
| entity.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Except the IRS thinks the impersonated author is making that
| income, not the person trying to launder money. This won't
| help them with the IRS.
| arafa wrote:
| I agree, the title is misleading. This doesn't have the
| traditional hallmarks of money laundering since the scheme is
| mostly transparent and fradulent. It's really just a scam.
| compsciphd wrote:
| notice how amazon gift cards go for higher than face value on
| ebay
|
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=amazon+gift+c...
|
| My only logic is that its a form of money laundering.
| grecy wrote:
| What if it's just a big game between friends for Credit Card
| Points?
|
| We just keep going back and forward between you and I, always
| getting the $1k Credit Card sign up bonuses and a TON of points
| each month.
| gruez wrote:
| >My only logic is that its a form of money laundering.
|
| That doesn't really make sense. Why buy it online leaving a
| papertrail (ebay account, bank/credit card transactions), when
| you can buy it anonymously in person using cash? The daily
| volume also isn't there. It's a couple thousand dollars per day
| at most. You can easily get that amount in person without
| raising any suspicion by driving to different stores in your
| city.
| jklein11 wrote:
| Money laundering typically implies taking illegitimate
| sources of income and making them seem legitimate. In this
| case you could sell yourself $100 gift cards for $120. You
| wouldn't even necessarily have to send yourself a gift card.
| You now have a legit source of income aka your eBay sellers
| account for illegal income.
| gruez wrote:
| And the IRS is totally cool with you selling thousands of
| dollars of gift cards each week with no corresponding
| invoices on how you obtained them? Money laundering
| business tend to be cash based with high margins (eg. car
| wash), so you only need to buy $10 worth of supplies to
| launder $1000 worth of cash.
| mywittyname wrote:
| There's probably enough money on the books to acquire the
| "inventory". Especially if the "company" never pays out
| the profits.
|
| I.e, a $10,000 outside "investment" allows you to sell
| 100, $100 gift cards for $120. Those profits get
| reinvested on the books, and now you have $12,000 to sell
| 120, $100 gift cards. Lather, rinse, repeat.
| gruez wrote:
| That's still sort of pointless because you need to
| generate a ton of turnover, which increase costs (credit
| card processing fees) and generally raises suspicion.
| With a carwash you might only need 1000 fake car washes
| at $60 each ($60,000 turnover) each to launder $50,000,
| but with the amazon gift card scheme you'll need to do
| $250,000 in turnover which is suspiciously high for a
| small business selling gift cards.
| mywittyname wrote:
| $250k per month is $3 million a year. That's not high
| revenue for a mom-and-pop online reseller. Especially
| given the margins for typical resellers. Plus, it's far
| more efficient than something like a car wash. You can
| have one automated platform that sells through various
| businesses to keep revenue figures where you need them.
| So if you want to stay under $50k/y revenue, then split
| the sales among five various "companies."
|
| With a car was, 1000 washes, at 5m per wash is 84 hours
| of active operating time. This creates an upper limit on
| the amount of money that can reasonably flow through the
| company, since 84 hours is roughly 3 hours a day of
| utilization per month. You might be able to get by with
| about double that many washes without raising suspicion.
| But all it takes is a peak at the company's water bill to
| determine how accurate that figure really is.
|
| Plus the operating expenses are much higher, as it
| requires a specialized building, land, etc. Whereas the
| online retail requires a computer and some software. It's
| easier to move and hide. There's just so many benefits to
| using online retailers over brick and mortar operations.
| gruez wrote:
| >$250k per month is $3 million a year. That's not high
| revenue for a mom-and-pop online reseller
|
| What kind of a mom and pop store sells $3M year in amazon
| gift cards?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Not necessarily gift cards. But $3 million in revenue is
| right about the time a small online business can afford
| to move from the garage to a dedicated space with staff.
| I would expect that Ebay/Amazon/etc all have many
| resellers in that $1-5MM revenue range.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And where do you get the cash? This scheme is part of how you
| convert illegitimate money (usually stolen CCs in the case of
| eCommerce) into cash.
|
| You set up a bank account and amazon seller account you
| control in someone else's name. Then you use your stolen CCs
| to buy the "book" from yourself thereby converting credit
| card details into money in an account you control. From there
| you can get the money out in a multitude of ways (or launder
| it again through the same or another method) depending on
| your risk tolerance.
| gruez wrote:
| >And where do you get the cash? This scheme is part of how
| you convert illegitimate money (usually stolen CCs in the
| case of eCommerce) into cash.
|
| why not just buy it from amazon directly? does ebay/paypal
| have looser anti-fraud systems than amazon?
|
| >You set up a bank account and amazon seller account you
| control in someone else's name. Then you use your stolen
| CCs to buy the "book" from yourself thereby converting
| credit card details into money in an account you control.
|
| That doesn't work because if you funnel a bunch of stolen
| credit card purchases into that account, it will quickly
| get flagged for an unusually high chargeback rate.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >why not just buy it from amazon directly? does
| ebay/paypal have looser anti-fraud systems than amazon?
|
| Every additional step is an additional level of
| obfuscation.
|
| I don't get what you mean by "buy it directly". You don't
| want the book and you don't want to be buying things for
| yourself using illegitimate money.
|
| >That doesn't work because if you funnel a bunch of
| stolen credit card purchases into that account, it will
| quickly get flagged for an unusually high chargeback
| rate.
|
| I shouldn't have mentioned CCs. Nobody is buying $500
| books with credit cards that are likely to charge back.
| You generally use those for drop-shipping scams where you
| list $5 toilet brushes for $4.95 on another site and then
| use the stolen CC to pay. Say you list on eBay and buy on
| Amazon, the people will dispute Amazon charges but it
| doesn't matter because the happy customers of your eBay
| account are getting their $4.95 toilet brushes just fine.
| $500 books could be an intermediary step where you have
| $24k sitting in a sketchy account you control (toilet
| brush business is booming) and you need to siphon it out.
| You'll be the only one buying the book so no charge-back
| risk.
| dkersten wrote:
| > I don't get what you mean by "buy it directly". You
| don't want the book and you don't want to be buying
| things for yourself using illegitimate money.
|
| I took it to mean buying the gift cards from
| Amazon/physical store, rather than going through ebay.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I missed the context of the parent comment. In that case
| you would be using stolen CCs or something like that to
| buy the gift card codes. Then you'd use the gift card
| balance to buy the "book" from Amazon with proceeds going
| to an account you control. The charge-back will go to the
| gift card seller if the $5-50 transaction is noticed at
| all.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Pardon me, but how is gift card price related and how could
| gift cards ever be cheaper than face value (surely someone
| somewhere would be working at a loss)?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| The question is why wouldn't someone buy from Amazon
| AnssiH wrote:
| The buyer may not have supported payment methods,
| especially overseas.
|
| E.g. most German cards don't work at amazon.com (unless
| things have changed recently), but work at PayPal.
| inetknght wrote:
| I wouldn't, and haven't, bought anything from Amazon since
| Amazon facilitates and perpetuates fraud.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| ... Which would include gift cards for amazon, indirectly
| paying Amazon doesn't change that.
|
| [edit] - I'm not sure parent comment was replying to the
| gift card point. My comment was specifically about why
| buy Amazon Gift Cards from a third party ever.
| Larrikin wrote:
| My credit cards regularly offer 5% cashback for grocery
| stores, drug stores and other physical locations that sell
| gift cards. They also offer 5 percent back for pay pal
| purchases which can be combined with places like Raise.com
| to get a lot more than 5 percent saved in total, and gift
| cards almost always go for under full price.
|
| If you're doing an online purchase you can combine with a
| coupon collector site, credit cards, and gift cards to get
| steep discounts. When I shopped at H&M their gift cards
| regularly had 15-35% discounts from gift card sites and
| they will accept any piece of fabric in store for a
| discount coupon, making the clothes close to fifty percent
| off in total.
|
| When shopping online it adds possibly two minutes extra to
| check out once you get used to the flow. It's not
| recommended for gifts as it mucks up the return flow but
| gift cards are usually only for large retail outlets so
| it's always possible to hold on to it and purchase
| something later.
|
| This is all legitimate use and not a flow for money
| laundering.
| sct202 wrote:
| If they're using fraudulent payment sources (stolen credit
| cards) it may be harder for them to use them on Amazon
| versus somewhere else.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Yeah, I was sort of implying "unless there is something
| dodgy going on"
| [deleted]
| benmanns wrote:
| You can buy unlimited gift cards directly from the merchant
| for face value, so that sets the price ceiling. Gift cards
| are strictly worse than cash, and individuals with gift cards
| who want to sell them value them less than face value,
| otherwise they'd keep/spend them. The only legitimate cases I
| can think of are if you are spending an eBay gift card to buy
| one you value more, or if you somehow get extra cash back or
| etc to justify buying from eBay over the gift card issuer.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Interesting. I thought gift cards were used by people who
| lack a supported payment method, and face value was the
| floor.
| compsciphd wrote:
| we aren't talking credit card gift cards (i.e.
| visa/master card brandedc cards, we are talking store
| branded cards, and while amazon cards are the closest to
| cash of all of them, due to the the number of products
| they sell, you can still buy them for face value from
| amazon, why pay more?)
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Lots of lower income areas have places (some of which are
| legit, most of them not) that will purchase gift cards for 50
| cents on the dollar or less. The idea is that someone might
| gift you a giftcard to, say, Home Depot, but you need food
| rather than lumber. So you sell the gift card to a broker at
| a steep discount and pocket the money.
|
| But this also a good way to launder money, most often for
| low-level drug transactions. Drug addicts steal credit cards
| or pass bad checks to buy gift cards. Then either give the
| cards to a dealer directly, or to a broker. The broker gives
| them cash, which they take to the dealer.
| 0goel0 wrote:
| That's not money laundering. The gift card in that scenario
| is still "dirty".
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Functionally, the gift card is clean as long as it
| continues to be valid. And most of them do. The user of
| the gift card isn't the purchaser, so they can use it
| without (much) fear.
|
| People can also abuse return policies. Most places will
| give you a gift card if you return unused merchandise
| without a receipt. So people will shoplift small, high-
| value items from one store and return them to another.
| Get a gift card, and then sell the gift card. The cash
| isn't traceable, and the broker gets a tidy profit.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Most places will give you a gift card if you return
| unused merchandise without a receipt.
|
| Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there's a
| record you made the purchase no?
| [deleted]
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience. Policies may have
| changed, although I'm not sure how they'd know if
| purchased something using a credit card if you don't have
| your receipt.
|
| Most places typically will provide the refund if you have
| the merchandise and an ID. The ID helps loss prevent
| determine if someone's returning an abnormally large
| amount of goods, but there's no shortage of mules for
| this kind of scam.
|
| I'm not in the loss prevention field (anymore), and my
| knowledge of these sorts of scams is a few years old.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Usually only if you paid with a credit card, so there's
| a record you made the purchase no?
|
| No. Usually, if you can prove that you made the purchase
| at the store, by any acceptable means, they will refund
| you (for credit card purchases, usually exclusively to
| the card used for the purchase).
|
| If you can't, but they let you return anyway, they'll
| typically give you store credit (if they don't issue gift
| cards) or a gift card, so that the "money" you get
| ultimately is going to be spent at the store (or not at
| all.)
| Theodores wrote:
| I have a gift card in my wallet that you can have for a
| fraction of what it is for. I need nothing from the store
| issuing the gift card but I would like booze from the shop
| around the corner or cash for some contraband substances.
|
| The store issuing the gift card is out of the town center and
| I have had it for ages. Make me an offer and, if I get enough
| booze or contraband for now/tonight then I am happy.
| stuckindider wrote:
| It's a simple way to launder stolen credit cards.
|
| Buy gift cards with a stolen credit card
|
| Sell the gift cards for cheap to random people on the
| internet for crypto
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Nothing is laundered here though. You have a bunch of cash
| or crypto that has no provenance.
| dkersten wrote:
| Going by comments here it seems that most people equate
| "turning stolen CC into money" as laundering, even though
| that money is dirty and indeed not laundered. The IRS or
| whoever isn't gonna be fooled.
| xur17 wrote:
| A lot of time the merchants sell them at a discount since
| they are normally gifted, so it brings in new business, some
| are lost, etc. There are entire communities online that take
| advantage of these discounts + credit card points, and resell
| the cards to others.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > and how could gift cards ever be cheaper than face value
| (surely someone somewhere would be working at a loss)?
|
| Gift cards are _always_ cheaper than face value. The basic
| economics tells you they can 't be more expensive than that,
| since they are similar to money, but worse. They can easily
| be cheaper; $300 at Starbucks is not as good as $200 wherever
| you want.
|
| Your incredulity is pretty shocking; if you want to see gift
| cards sold cheaper than face value, all you need to do is
| walk into a Costco.
| goblin89 wrote:
| I use gift cards regularly to unlock country-specific
| content stores (such as Steam and others) other than where
| my bank or physical location is. Not once have I seen a
| gift card supplier that sells them cheaper than face value.
|
| Where does your experience come from? It seems appallingly
| out of touch.
| mlyle wrote:
| At Costco and other stores, you can often purchase gift
| cards for a bit below face value.
|
| When Apple, Amazon, etc, seek to have retailers carry
| their gift cards, the retailer needs to have an
| incentive. So the gift cards are usually sold for below
| face value to the retailer. In turn, some retailers will
| sell gift cards for below their face value.
|
| So, e.g., at this moment, Nintendo eShop $50 cards are
| $44.99; XBox/Sony Playstation $100 gift cards are $89.99;
| a $500 gift card on Alaska Airlines is $449.99; $100 at
| Hulu is $89.99.
|
| These are not particularly good prices. Oftentimes Apple
| $100 gift cards will be $79.99.
|
| The other incentives at Costco still hold, too; you can
| get the Executive Membership 2% back and the 2% credit
| card cash back.
| goblin89 wrote:
| If I wanted to use a US content store and in fact lived
| in the US (which sounds like a prerequisite for being
| able to enjoy those Costco discounts), presumably I would
| not need to purchase gift cards in the first place.
|
| Where gift cards are available, they are never cheaper
| than face value due to basic market dynamics.
|
| In retail stores in non-Western countries I have never
| seen a gift card with e.g. 100 unit value sold for less
| than 100 units either, although I haven't specifically
| looked for such.
| compsciphd wrote:
| https://www.giftcardgranny.com/
| goblin89 wrote:
| I peeked. (A) Cards I use are not there, (B) an Apple
| Store US$100 card is sold for $100, and (C) US payment
| method is required, which kind of defeats the entire
| point. Good try though.
|
| In this thread, a fundamental misunderstanding of how
| gift card market works seems to prevail.
|
| There's basic arbitrage. Vendor Acme in region X locks
| out people from region Y (e.g., based on payment method
| address); Alice lives in region X and can buy an N value
| Acme gift card for N-1 at a local store; Bob lives in
| region Y and wants to transact with Acme; Alice buys a
| gift card for N-1 and sells it to Bob for N+1 online; Bob
| gains the ability to transact with Acme, Alice gains 2 as
| revenue.
|
| Thus, gift cards going for higher than face value does
| not automatically imply anything beyond a market acting
| as it should and is not specific to Amazon in any way.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > and (C) US payment method is required, which kind of
| defeats the entire point. Good try though.
|
| You... are aware that the primary market for USD-
| denominated gift cards is US residents, right?
| goblin89 wrote:
| You still don't get it. The original poster uses gift
| cards going for higher than face value on eBay as
| evidence of money laundering. I am pointing out that on
| eBay there is a demand for gift cards from buyers whose
| payment method is accepted by eBay but not accepted by
| gift card vendor. Those buyers may be located elsewhere
| in the world but want to use that vendor's content or
| services, so they buy gift cards and use them as primary
| way of payment. eBay sellers respond to that demand by
| setting higher prices for gift cards.
| holtalanm wrote:
| Ever been to Costco? They sell $50 gift cards for a bunch of
| different stores, and you only pay like $45 at the register.
|
| I know, $5 isn't much, but it is still lower than face value.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| That explains why people would pay less for a gift card but
| not more??
| holtalanm wrote:
| The parent of my post was asking how it was possible to
| have a gift card sell for less than face value....
| silverpepsi wrote:
| One black friday season I went in Office Max or Depot and
| bought 20 $100 gift cards for Amazon because there was a very
| slight discount. This enabled me to purchase a laptop and
| save $100 approx
|
| Remember Amazon has the credit card fee margin of savings if
| someone uses a gift card instead of a credit card.
| koboll wrote:
| More likely churning credit card points.
| [deleted]
| choeger wrote:
| At 60% ? I would love to know the credit card that makes this
| a profitable enterprise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sign-up bonuses help. There are a number of cards offering
| bonuses in excess of $1k if you meet minimum spends.
| stevespang wrote:
| Amazon refuses to issue a corrected 1099 or provide me with any
| information I can use to determine where or how they were
| remitting the royalties."
|
| Time to lawyer up and relieve Bezos of a few tens of thousands of
| $$$
| lrossi wrote:
| Given that some of the titles have 1-star reviews, I think the
| goal is to scam people into buying expensive crap. The books are
| auto generated and the content is worthless.
|
| In many countries it's difficult to request refunds for online
| payments, especially if it was clear what you were buying.
| There's a look inside button you can use to see a large selection
| of pages.
|
| He generated so many books probably to cover all kinds of tech
| topics, to reach more victims.
| lrossi wrote:
| What I mean to say is that a launderer would not have bothered
| leaving bad reviews for his own fake books. The people who did
| this bought the books by mistake.
|
| Not sure why this idea gets downvoted. The simpler explanation
| is usually right.
| folli wrote:
| Using GPT-3 to 'write' the books instead of obvious gibberish
| would lead to an additional layer of evasion.
| revicon wrote:
| Is there a version of GPT-3 that is available for use by the
| general public right now? I haven't seen anything outside of
| OpenAPI's private beta.
| jrockway wrote:
| GPT-2 is available. I played with it a little bit and was
| mildly impressed. I don't think I would read a book written
| by GPT-2, but it's better than gibberish.
| mhb wrote:
| How is this money "laundering"? It just seems like a way to use
| stolen credit cards to make fraudulent charges.
| ja27 wrote:
| I've seen the same claim about obscure mobile apps.
| [deleted]
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Comments in the article are from 2018: what's changed since then?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| So odd question if anyone can answer. Did Amazon already have the
| author's information ( and hence the 1099 ) or did the fraudster
| submit it ( in which case, why did he give the correct address )?
| TheNorthman wrote:
| > Reames is a credited author on Amazon by way of several
| commodity industry books
|
| They most likely already had his information.
| kuroguro wrote:
| Just fraud, not laundering. They're solving the problem of how to
| effectively cash out credit cards. Selling items in someone
| else's platform has multiple upsides:
|
| 1. it's a large trusted platform, so the victim's bank is less
| likely to freeze the transactions
|
| 2. multiple items with arbitrary pricing means maxing out each
| card is simpler
|
| 3. the platform will likely have to eat the charge-backs, so
| where ever the seller receives money from Amazon is relatively
| safe for a while to further convert into crypto or whatever
|
| 4. because of the size of the platform you can keep creating new
| accounts indefinitely - they cannot possibly vet all new sellers
| - this is probably where the stolen identities for authors come
| in. Amazon must be doing some basic sanity checks / credit score
| lookups or something similar - hence they need real peoples names
| / SSNs.
|
| I've seen similar things on app stores / freelancer sites etc.
| Yes, the accounts get flagged after a while, but there's usually
| enough time to cash out and creating a new one isn't that hard.
| elliekelly wrote:
| How is this not money laundering? It is most definitely money
| laundering. The stolen money arrives in a bank account
| appearing "clean" because it was "earned" via Amazon book
| sales. The true origin of the illicit cash is now obscured and
| within the mainstream financial system.
| kuroguro wrote:
| That just seems short sighted as the seller's account would
| be tracked down sooner or later. Entering your real details
| on a receiving account is way too risky.
|
| It would be possible to launder with a similar setup - just
| not with stolen cards but with prepaid cash/crypto ones so
| amazon doesn't flag the account for charge-backs. But then
| there's no real need to steal the book author's identity. You
| could just put your own name or a pseudonym on it. For a 1099
| to arrive they've clearly entered the stolen SSN somewhere.
| You'd want your own SSN there to prove to the IRS that you've
| made the money... (and then you'd want to pay the taxes).
| elliekelly wrote:
| Not if you're transferring the funds to a non-US account
| via wire transfer. They time it perfectly so the money is
| in and out of the person's account before the person even
| realizes it and by the time they do it's too late. The
| money is gone.
| kuroguro wrote:
| I guess it could be. Either that or I'm overestimating
| the thief's long term planning ability :)
|
| Still - if they're not paying the taxes I wouldn't call
| it laundering.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Thats an odd distinction to draw. The definition of money
| laundering has nothing to do with taxes.
| dralley wrote:
| Exactly. The same kind of money laundering happens on Steam
| as well. Buying and selling CS:GO skins and trading cards or
| whatever for hundreds or thousands of dollars through a
| trading platform not designed to care about shady transaction
| patterns.
| quercusa wrote:
| This feels like some sort of scam but it's not clear what the
| purpose would be:
|
| G.J. Blokdijk is the 'author' of thousands of medical titles:
| https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&fie...
|
| Gerardus Blokdijk gets more than 40,000 hits for computer-related
| titles apparently generated by template:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Gerardus+Blokdyk&i=stripbooks&ref...
| duskwuff wrote:
| Different kind of scam. Those books are fillable forms -- the
| medical titles have pages of generic questions like "how often
| should I take <some medication>" and "can you take <some
| medication> with food", with large spaces for the reader to
| write an answer. The books aren't specific to the medication at
| all, as evidenced by the fact that they're full of irrelevant
| questions (like asking if an antiparasitic drug is addictive).
|
| The business titles in the second SERP look similar -- they're
| poorly formatted scoring systems or checklists.
|
| So yeah. Those books look "legitimate" inasmuch as they are at
| least intended to be bought by real people believing that they
| are useful, rather than as a means of money laundering. The
| content of the books is heavily templated to the point of
| making the books not worth their selling price, but that's a
| separate issue.
| mysterypie wrote:
| I looked at some of the Verified Purchase reviews. Here's an
| example regarding NIST Cybersecurity Framework A Complete
| Guide: "Absolutely worthless book. Just a serious of
| questions. No discussion, no guidance, no suggestions, no
| interpretation. PT Barnum, of circus fame, once said that
| there is another sucker born every second. You buy this book,
| you join that crowd. I returned it immediately for a refund."
|
| So I guess the scammer profits from those persons who don't
| bother to return the book.
|
| I can't believe that it's in Amazon's interest to allow this
| level of BS. It seems pretty easy to detect as well.
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