Amazon has a traitor inside, and sellers go bankrupt overnight

With the development of e-commerce, the number of fraud cases related to it has also increased. The e-commerce giant Amazon is a frequent customer. Orders are likely to become a way for fraudsters to make money. In addition to buyers, sellers are also the targets of fraudsters. Even fraudsters have infiltrated Amazon, which makes it even harder to guard against.

A scammer paid Amazon employees to help him hijack sellers' accounts and steal information to copy their products, according to an internal memo seen by WIRED.

The scammer, who went by the alias Krasr , reportedly recruited seven Amazon employees through LinkedIn and Facebook and paid them a total of $160,000 over several years .

Not only will they copy the seller’s products, they will also use them to blackmail the seller. For example, in 2017, the 23-year-old Krasr “hijacked” the products of a popular skin care seller at the time, copied his best-selling products, left a large number of negative reviews under the seller’s products, and even excluded the seller from Amazon searches, causing the seller to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars or even “go bankrupt overnight.”

In some cases, the scam group even developed a ransom plan, contacted the controlled sellers, and offered to "help" them restore their personal information. As an important intermediary between sellers and the platform, Amazon customer service often holds the power of life and death of sellers, but these Amazon employees may be "fake"   , how can so many third-party sellers feel at ease?

As soon as the incident came out, an Amazon spokesperson responded, " The company has invested billions of dollars to establish systems and processes to ensure data security, and the claims in the report are based on outdated information and will not affect Amazon's current security posture. "

It is reported that this incident occurred in 2018. According to Amazon's response, after learning about the incident, Amazon deleted the seller accounts related to the scammers, fired the "spy" employees, reported Krasr to the FBI, and hired a private investigator to confirm his whereabouts, resolutely cracking down on fraudulent activities against customers.

According to the news, this is not the only time Amazon has found "traitors" in its team . Suspected bribery and selling of personal data have also occurred recently.

If sellers encounter this situation, it will definitely cause certain losses. For the common development of the platform and sellers, Amazon must also conduct strict employee reviews internally.

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