Money Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon?
Summary: Someone used author Patrick Reames' name and Social Security number to publish a computer-generated gibberish book titled "Lower Days Ahead" on Amazon's Createspace, priced at $555 and sold more than 60 times, generating a 1099 form reporting nearly $24,000 in earnings to the IRS. Reames suspects the sales were made with stolen credit or debit cards to launder money and commit tax fraud, and he said he found hundreds or thousands of similar fraudulent Createspace titles, including dozens of gibberish Kindle books attributed to Vyacheslav Grzhibovskiy priced between $220 and $320.
Bottom line: Amazon told Reames it could not prove he did not receive the funds and refused to tell him where the royalties went, leaving him unable to clear himself on a 1099 tied to his Social Security number. A fraud investigator also reported bank customers who called fake Amazon support numbers found online had their accounts used to open new Amazon and Coinbase accounts.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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