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Schneier on Securitypublished ()ingested Bruce Schneier

Textbook Rental Scam

lowPhishing & fraudimportance 30
Full article125 words · extracted from schneier.com · click to collapse

Here’s a story of someone who, with three compatriots, rented textbooks from Amazon and then sold them instead of returning them. They used gift cards and prepaid credit cards to buy the books, so there was no available balance when Amazon tried to charge them the buyout price for non-returned books. They also used various aliases and other tricks to bypass Amazon’s fifteen-book limit. In all, they stole 14,000 textbooks worth over $1.5 million.

The article doesn’t link to the indictment, so I don’t know how they were discovered.

EDITED TO ADD (11/12): Press release.

Tags: Amazon, courts, crime, fraud, scams

Posted on October 20, 2021 at 6:16 AM79 Comments

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Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/10/textbook-rental-scam.html