Con artists target Amazon website

Con artists target Amazon website

Shoppers are lured away from the secure area of the site, best known as a bookstore but also a virtual meeting place for buyers and sellers, and persuaded to wire money for items which they do not receive.

The scam is similar to one operated by con artists who target users of the eBay site, as revealed in the Guardian earlier this month.

Both eBay and Amazon have been criticised for not doing enough to warn users about the cons. One scam on the "Marketplace" area of Amazon's site - a cyberspace trading area - involves an organisation calling itself Bargain Ltd.

Dave, a health professional from the north of England, was one of many who spotted that it was offering a £500 digital camera for £200. He sent an email to the organisation registering his interest.

The supposed sellers said they were "Japanese wholesalers on a three-day contract approved by Amazon" who as part of a "strategy towards unleashing our website next month are offering Amazon customers the chance to purchase products at wholesale prices".

The email came with a message falsely claiming to come from Amazon which said the seller had been authorised to collect payment "via bank transfer only" rather than through the site's secure payment system.

Also in the email were details of Bargain Ltd, including a company registration.....continued below

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The details are accurate. There is such a company registered with Companies House - Bargain Ltd is in a name owned by a firm based in Willenhall, West Midlands, called Poundland, which specialises in cut-price goods.

However it has not offered goods on Amazon. The fraudsters adopted the name to give their operation respectability.

Poundland has put a warning about the scam on its website. Its operations controller, Mike Gray, said around six victims of the con had contacted it. One had given the fraudsters £500.

Mr Gray said he believed Amazon ought to put more prominent warnings on its site. "There is a huge amount of legal information on the site. The information is there but it is not easy to find."

Dave, who has asked not to be identified, fearing that criminal gangs might be involved, agreed: "Amazon should at least post warning signs that are clearly visible rather than embedded in the small print."

Suspecting a con, Dave did not go through with the deal but reported it to Amazon's security team earlier this month.

Amazon claims it takes such con merchants off the site immediately. However last weekend the bogus Bargain Limited popped back up on Amazon, again offering cut-price digital cameras. The con merchants had vanished by late Monday morning but returned later in the week, suggesting that while the site can remove the fraudsters, it is struggling to stop them returning.

The Guardian contacted another dubious seller on Amazon expressing an interest in a cut-price digital camera.

The purported seller claimed to have bought the camera from the "second largest digital cameras [sic] store from my country [Romania]". He said the store went bankrupt, allowing him to get "a great deal buying the Fuji", and added he would send the camera once we transferred £200 to him.