What is the method by which a large-scale 'refund fraud group' stole over 100 million yen from Amazon?
Many online shopping sites, including Amazon, have a system where if you do not receive the item you ordered or there is a defect in the item, you can contact us and receive a refund. Technology media 404 Media reports on the reality of a large-scale ``refund fraud group'' that exploits this mechanism to earn large sums of money.
How a 'Refund Fraud' Gang Stole $700,000 From Amazon
According to an indictment jointly investigated by independent media outlets Court Watch and 404 Media, which report on various court records, the U.S. government has indicted members of a large-scale refund fraud group called the Artemis Refund Group (ARG). thing.
Refund fraud is when someone orders an expensive item on an online shopping site such as Amazon or Walmart, and after the item arrives, they use various tricks to get the retailer to refund their money, essentially getting the item for free. It's a scam where you resell it for a profit. ARG reportedly turned this refund fraud into a business, recruiting accomplices to order and resell products through Telegram channels and other channels.
The scheme of the fraud carried out by ARG is simple. First, you order a high-priced item using your accomplice's account, and when the item arrives, you inform the mail order site that the item has not arrived or that the item is defective, and you receive a refund. I'll have it done. After that, the accomplices resold the obtained products and made a profit, while ARG collected 15% to 20% of the product purchase price from the accomplices as a commission.
Refund scams are openly discussed on overseas message boards such as Reddit, Discord, Telegram channels, and hacking forums. Refund fraud works because the retailer's intention is to provide excellent customer service, and when the package is actually damaged during delivery, misdelivered, or stolen after being delivered. The background lies in the fact that there is.
For major online shopping sites like Amazon, theft of delivered packages is a major problem that degrades the user experience. Furthermore, major mail order sites are willing to refund users or ship a second item, so they often issue refunds without closely examining each case.
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Additionally, since the decision on whether or not to accept a refund may differ depending on the customer service representative, it may be effective in some cases to use the tactic of 'representative gacha' until you find a representative who is willing to issue a refund.
The refund fraud methods used by ARG are even more sophisticated, such as sending an empty box or a different item when the online shopping site asks for the item to be returned, or creating a fake tracking ID to disguise the destination of the item. Sometimes I did. Although the product you actually purchased will not be returned to the mail order site, many mail order sites will refund your money because it is recorded as 'delivered'.
According to the indictment, ARG has carried out thousands of refund frauds since April 2019 alone, with some products being sold on eBay and Mercari. Amazon has suffered a loss of over 700,000 dollars (approximately 105 million yen) due to a series of frauds, and other mail order sites are estimated to have lost millions of dollars (hundreds of millions of yen) in total.
Please note that ARG's Telegram channel no longer exists at the time of article creation.
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