A very specific way to defraud Amazon and other online sales sites is gaining ground recently. Risking it is not without legal consequences.
When someone tells you “scam” then “Amazon”, you spontaneously think of sellers who offer fake products on the platform. Or maybe some emails you receive about Prime Video are actually phishing attempts. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Here, Amazon and other online sales sites are the victims. The way of proceeding is not new, but it is developing at high speed.
The technique in question is called “refund“, or reimbursement in French. Its principle is very simple: you order an item on Amazon, for example, then after receipt, declare that you never received it to obtain a refund. And in order to make maximum profits, you then resell the item received. In France, the police have already dismantled an entire organized group engaging in this illegal practice. Despite this, we note the rise in power of a form of professionalization.
More and more people are trying to defraud Amazon with this technique
On most social networks, as well Telegram what TikTokmany people offer their “refunder” services. You give them access to your account on a sales site and they take care of everything for a payment once the refund is made. For Johanne Ulloa, expert in digital identity and fraud, “there is the opportunistic fraudster and the fraudsters who usurp or create accounts to carry out this type of fraud professionally“.
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Amazon and others are not remaining idle in the face of the phenomenon. The company founded by Jeff Bezos has already filed a complaint against a company known for engaging in refunds. Antoine Chéron, lawyer specializing in intellectual and digital property, specifies that the firm “uses artificial intelligence algorithms to detect fraudulent patterns like abnormal returns, repetitive addresses“.
He also reminds us that the “refunders” risk a lot: the Penal Code provides for penalties of up to 5 years of imprisonment and €375,000 fine. Added to this are possible prosecutions for concealment of goods obtained fraudulently, deception et commercial harm. Even for complicity in fraud if you promote “refund” on social networks.
Source: BFMTV
