Amazon Spends $1.2 Bil a Year to Investigate Fraud

Apparently folks think Amazon is their personal piggy bank.

Amazon said that last year alone they spent at least $1.2 billion employing investigators to manually detect fraud (this is in addition to their automated fraud detection) and have 15,000 people working to combat fraud, theft and abuse.

This translates to higher prices for you.

One gang, the REKK fraud gang, stole millions in illicit refunds. Amazon is now suing them. And it includes seven former Amazon insiders who facilitated the fraud.

Lets say you would like a new iPad but don’t want to fork over the money for it. You purchase the item and then you go to REKK and for a fee, they will obtain a fraudulent refund for you, reducing your cost by say 70 percent.

REKK is an equal opportunity crook, stealing from many online companies include LuLu Lemon, Samsung, Nike, Home Depot and others, in addition to Amazon.

Being a modern business, REKK even advertises. Granted not on Google, but rather on underground forums and even Reddit.

The group, of course, has a Telegram channel. That channel has more than 35,000 subscribers and advertised that their refunds are fraudulent.

When Amazon can find the crooks, they go after them, supporting the cops on three continents just last month.

Different retailers are more or less aggressive in going after the hackers, but it is expensive and it does affect prices to you and me.

Also remember that Amazon’s revenue for the QUARTER ending September 30, 2023 was $143 billion and their gross profit for the QUARTER was $68 billion, so spending $1.2 billion a year, seems somewhat minor, maybe.

Credit: Bleeping Computer

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