Amazon was "only refunded"! The loss has reached $2.4 million

Recently, the Bengaluru police in India arrested a student for colluding with a gang to defraud Amazon India of 388,000 rupees (about 4,667 US dollars).

The student, from Madhya Pradesh, India, ordered an iPhone 14 Pro Max and three iPhone 14 Plus between May 15 and 17 this year, and paid for the goods through credit card and UPI.

A few days later, Amazon discovered that the student had initiated an order return and had received a refund, but Amazon had not received the returned merchandise.

Amazon then sent its safety loss prevention manager Raj Reddy to investigate the student. When questioned by Reddy, the student admitted that a friend from Madhya Pradesh asked him to place an order and pay on Amazon, and then apply for a return of the order, so that he could buy the desired goods at a price lower than the market price.

Paramesh HC, south zone manager of Amazon Transportation Services Pvt Ltd, then alerted the Yeshwantpur police (Amazon's Indian headquarters is located in Yeshwantpur ).

A police officer familiar with the investigation said that the police station that received the tip-off arrested the student on May 26 and confiscated the iPhones.

As the investigation deepened, the police found that the scam was carried out through a Telegram channel by a group with access to Amazon's confidential information . The group members were distributed in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They had administrator privileges and could manipulate the Amazon application to make it show that the product had been returned.

So far, the police have confiscated goods worth 20.34 million rupees (about 24,469 U.S. dollars). These goods include 16 iPhones, two MacBooks, a desktop computer, a Vivo phone, a gaming laptop, an Apple Airpods and a Panasonic air conditioner. The police also confiscated 250,000 rupees (about 3,007 U.S. dollars) in cash and froze a bank balance of 3 million rupees (36,090 U.S. dollars).

In an interview with the media, Paramesh denied that Amazon's application had been hacked, but did not rule out the possibility that current or former employees were involved.

He believes that ordinary people cannot do this kind of crime, so Amazon is investigating whether any internal employees are involved and has provided all relevant documents to the police.

Paramesh also said the company had lost about 200 million rupees ($2.4 million) in similar cases but had only filed police reports in Bengaluru .

It is reported that the company is still compiling the losses and will lodge more reports with the police. Paramesh suspects that criminal gangs are luring students and technicians into these scams.

A police officer involved in the investigation said that the gang members collected a 20% commission from customers , and the police suspected that someone had stolen the accounts and passwords of Amazon's internal employees.

Amazon

Scams

loss