Amazon files a complaint against a company offering services to obtain a refund for a product without returning it. The amount of the scam is in the millions of dollars.
Amazonthe famous online sales platformit’s almost $680 billion spent by users in 2023. Faced with such an amount, it is not surprising that some people with bad intentions see this as an opportunity to put part of it in their pockets. And these are not the Ways to Scam Amazon lacking. Back when there were fewer checks, you could make money by returning sand-filled packages and still keep the product you purchased. More recently, a French network was reimbursed for items it stole from Amazon lockers.
The fraud that Amazon says it has been a victim of here is of the same ilk, but on an international scale. Through a social network like Redditeven Discordan advertisement extols the merits of a company called REKK. It offers individualsobtain a refund for them for an item purchased on Amazon. As payment, a percentage of property value in question. A godsend for the less scrupulous who can end up having to go easy on themselves.
An international network set up a major Amazon refund fraud
But how does REKK manage to validate false returns ? Quite simply in bribing Amazon employees, in fact accomplices in the scheme. When that’s not enough, the network hacks internal servers of the platform. To maximize profits, products are systematically expensive: high-end smartphones, MacBook Pro, video game consoles and even one 24 carat gold coin. The events took place at least between June 2022 and May 2023.
Amazon filed a complaint against REKK and approx. 30 people from around the world : United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Greece, Lithuania and Netherlands. At least 7 former employees were identified as an integral part of the fraud. The amount of bribes they accepted amounted to several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Amazon has not indicated an exact amount, but we know that the scam is worth millions of dollars.
Source: Bloomberg