A writer found he had won in a few months almost 20.000 euros, an amount that had entered ever selling books on Amazon. He discovered that someone had used her social security number to sell a fake gold price novel. The author believes there could be more cases like yours, possible victim of a plot to launder money through ecommerce.

One day, Patrick Reames, an American author of technical books, He received a surprising email. Amazon sent him a tax receipt for your tax return, why He had won almost 24.000 Dollars (more of 19.500 euros) in CreateSpace, publishing service Store online. A Reames was surprised this, first because he had never used CreateSpace and, second, why texts They had never reached a similar figure in the virtual library, in an account managed editorial. Thus, I began to investigate. And what he found was not happy not.

According to research Reames, someone had stolen her social security number and had begun to launder money at their expense. The first step was to see how he could get as much money on Amazon. He typed name and found a novel, Lower Days Ahead (now defunct web), whose alleged perpetrator was him and sold for 555 Dollars (more of 451 euros) in several national platforms Amazon.

The content had nothing to do with their texts on commodity markets. In fact, and it seems (it's no longer available), It was computer-generated textin which the words were unrelated, as the Reames himself saw in the free fragment can be downloaded for each copy. There was not even a few chapters or sections. Nobody would pay that much for it.

Reames believes that fraud has worked as follows: someone has been buying the book with a stolen card and becoming the 60 % the benefits that Amazon pays authors per copy, to be sent to an account with your newly created social security number, also stolen. So estimates, if he had supposedly won almost 24.000 He should have bought some dollars 70 books in three months. “I assume that [this book] It was used for money laundering, well as fraud or tax evasion by using my social security number”, has explained.

more fraud

After verifying what had happened, the writer decided to dig deeper to find out if yours was the only case of possible money laundering through Amazon. He investigated among those titles uploaded through Createspace and, by rating, could have hundreds or thousands of fraudulent books, with pages full of computer generated text or meaningless. Again, They are works for which a large amount of money requested, between 220 Y 320 Dollars (178 Y 259 euros).

Specific, Reames was set at such vyacheslav Grzhibovskiy, whose author page still exists on Amazon, but not their books, whose URLs are not active, as Quadrillion per Register, Trillion per Chips O Quadrillion per budget. content, Nevertheless, you can still see cache. “It is hard to imagine how these books They could be used to launder money using stolen credit cards, facilitating transactions illicit materials or financing illegal activities”, Reames said.

Marc Nieto, adviser fraud and payment in Spanish Association of Digital Economy and CEO of MP Services, working with electronic shops to avoid fraud online, He believes that this is a case of the latter. For him, It is not washed for two reasons: because they use a false name to collect, “as if money laundering would use their own”, and because they use credit cards instead of prepaid cards, that would be “perfect for cleaning, for you are with cash and you put everything on the card”.

In your opinion, Amazon is as much a victim as Cardholders or social security numbers as, If the account holders discover the swindle, the bank will ask the company all the stolen, the commission and the amount is sent to the account of cibercriminal. They will have to deliver that amount and, above, They have lost that had already passed him the offender.

Nieto explains that cybercriminals “They have detected and stolen credit cards [publish expensive books with computer-generated text] it is a way to get money”, an entry strategy and cash outflow used for social security number “a poor man”, also stolen. The lists of stolen cards can be obtained from the deep web, where there is “authentic supermarkets” of this product, in which besides the number associated data are sometimes their owners, the identification of social security. “At the end, who ends up paying the duck of this is Amazon”.

Nieto explains, that as soon as the company has detected fraud, there will be deactivated fraudulent sale options, such as books such Vyacheslav Grzhibovskiy. “Amazon, evidently, It has a very powerful fraud management team and what you are doing now is to block transactions related to these users, or will be at least investigating”.

After the story became public Reames, Amazon issued a statement reporting of an e-mail to all those who believed to have received the wrong formfrom income. further, They explained that the security of accounts was a “of our highest priorities, and we have policies and security measures to help protect”.

Fraud by Amazon

“It seems to want to wash their hands with the matter”, nos resume Reames. It is not the first time that the e-commerce giant faces fraud. In 2016 we learned of Users who claimed to have received a block of clay instead of an iPhone, after having purchased from third parties through Platform.

Apparently, they received the phone, but then they photographed clay and rose to comments on the model purchased. Since Amazon only knows that the package has reached a certain weight, He took for good criticism and review and return the amount. In this way, the swindler had a brand new iPhone and your money back.

Now, Reames is to check whether you will have any problems with the US administration by these foreign profits. You will not know until after the 15 of April, the last day to pay the IRS in that country. He says it has not heard from Amazon since he consulted his case. “I guess what is that probably the police and authorities to contact Asking what this”.

As well, He believes that at some point the platform will be “more cautious” with books that are shared there. As users, they should be careful and check books purchased by the person who wrote the signature and the text itself is not a robot. Although it is difficult to fall into that trap.

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The images are the property, In order of appearance, from Kolin Toney, Booktopia, Amazon | Google Y Pexels

The article appeared in The newspaper, in the technology section HojaDeRouter and he wrote Jose Manuel Blanco