‘SCARY’

Underground Market for Amazon Seller Pages Is Causing Chaos

With rogue sellers stealing the identifies of legitimate businesses, some innocent merchants are being bombarded with fraudulent return packages.

An elaborate black market that allows fraudulent businesses to buy experienced seller accounts on Amazon—inheriting their good reputation and reviews in the process—is screwing consumers and leading some innocent people to have their identity stolen, Insider reported Monday. Among those impacted most was a Colorado man who became inundated by “return packages” for a cheap clothing business he doesn’t run. The man, identified only as Andrew by Insider, said he sometimes receives dozens of return packages a day filled with clothes from angry customers he never sold to, with the return labels listing Amazon as the broker. While packages continued to arrive at his home, Andrew said Amazon did nothing to stop the influx, instead producing generic answers or ignoring him altogether when he reached out for support. Another instance involved a woman in Vancouver who had her home listed as the business address for a seller of fraudulent text books without her knowledge. These cases, and many others, are reportedly the result of sketchy sellers—banned for selling counterfeit products—purchasing the long-standing accounts of reputable sellers who no longer need them, sometimes for thousands of dollars. Buying the accounts on the black market means the fraudulent sellers don’t need to pass any security checks to start selling on Amazon, something they’d otherwise have to do when creating a new seller page. And when the accounts change hands, Insider says their new owners steal the identities of seemingly random people in order to keep their names away from their shady business dealings. Amazon did not directly address these instances in a statement to Insider, but said the company “aggressively fights fraud on its platform.”