Couple admits to stealing $1.2 million from Amazon
Posted Oct 2, 2017, 7:42 AM UTC
4011
Sounds like they'd create a fake account, purchase an item, and then report the shipment "lost or stolen", to which they'd receive a replacement item. Creating fake accounts is easy and probably hard for Amazon to track.
However, I have to imagine they were using the same few physical addresses for these shipments, and $1.2 million in "lost items" to a few addresses should've raised a red flag somewhere. So is that a weak point in the system, or were they using a way to hide their address somehow? Like a commercial shipping receiver or something?
They eventually got caught, so someone somewhere finally noticed something...
9
Could’ve used Amazon Lockers for delivery, but can’t see how they got around the billing address for payment cards
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Prepaid cards
3
Not too hard to track at all. Tracked by IP addresses, browsers, unique device identifiers, relations by those, credit cards, similar names, addresses. Not to mention the ability to see successful deliveries to that particular address vs local success rate.
Likely thney kept catching each account but it probably just didn't become a big thing until someone realized... I've saw a account rack up 26,000$ in 3 months before getting caught due to laziness of others. Machine learning is making it easy to identify, but human error (and laziness) and empathy makes it hard to stop.
5
If there are any vacant or vacation homes nearby, deliver there and pick up the package when it says delivered. Detroit has quite a few vacant homes, easy to get away with this one.
For payment, buy Amazon gift cards at a grocery store in cash (or risk it with a credit card, not sure if the grocery store exchanges the customers credit card with Amazon).
Use Tor in incognito mode to set up accounts and make purchases.
Am I missing anything here? Maybe send a mule to pick up the package in case Amazon catches on and asks local law enforcement to monitor the delivery address (extremely unlikely) or require signature and ID at delivery (much more likely).
Amazon could choose to set a probationary period for new accounts or accounts with a short order history. They could not issue refunds or redeliver lost packages to new accounts without the customer sending in a copy of government issued ID, but I think they're too customer focused to require this of the <0.1% bad apples. They have insurance (even if just self insured, using resale margins) to deal with this.
2
If you wonder why costs go up, why customer-friendly programs are rolled back or altogether are dissolved, or free services become paid services...it’s shitty people like these two. And there’s a lot of them out there.
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And recently Amazon is often asking people for police reports when deliveries are missing before giving a replacement or refund.
It's almost like they have a reason.
2
I never heard them ask for this ebay yeah but not amazon. they might start though.
1
"Alexa, stream Orange is the New Black."
That was what one of the characters did to end up in jail. The weird flapper one.
Lorna