[gruez]

>My only logic is that its a form of money laundering.

That doesn't really make sense. Why buy it online leaving a papertrail (ebay account, bank/credit card transactions), when you can buy it anonymously in person using cash? The daily volume also isn't there. It's a couple thousand dollars per day at most. You can easily get that amount in person without raising any suspicion by driving to different stores in your city.

[throwaway0a5e]

And where do you get the cash? This scheme is part of how you convert illegitimate money (usually stolen CCs in the case of eCommerce) into cash.

You set up a bank account and amazon seller account you control in someone else's name. Then you use your stolen CCs to buy the "book" from yourself thereby converting credit card details into money in an account you control. From there you can get the money out in a multitude of ways (or launder it again through the same or another method) depending on your risk tolerance.

[gruez]

>And where do you get the cash? This scheme is part of how you convert illegitimate money (usually stolen CCs in the case of eCommerce) into cash.

why not just buy it from amazon directly? does ebay/paypal have looser anti-fraud systems than amazon?

>You set up a bank account and amazon seller account you control in someone else's name. Then you use your stolen CCs to buy the "book" from yourself thereby converting credit card details into money in an account you control.

That doesn't work because if you funnel a bunch of stolen credit card purchases into that account, it will quickly get flagged for an unusually high chargeback rate.

[throwaway0a5e]

>why not just buy it from amazon directly? does ebay/paypal have looser anti-fraud systems than amazon?

Every additional step is an additional level of obfuscation.

I don't get what you mean by "buy it directly". You don't want the book and you don't want to be buying things for yourself using illegitimate money.

>That doesn't work because if you funnel a bunch of stolen credit card purchases into that account, it will quickly get flagged for an unusually high chargeback rate.

I shouldn't have mentioned CCs. Nobody is buying $500 books with credit cards that are likely to charge back. You generally use those for drop-shipping scams where you list $5 toilet brushes for $4.95 on another site and then use the stolen CC to pay. Say you list on eBay and buy on Amazon, the people will dispute Amazon charges but it doesn't matter because the happy customers of your eBay account are getting their $4.95 toilet brushes just fine. $500 books could be an intermediary step where you have $24k sitting in a sketchy account you control (toilet brush business is booming) and you need to siphon it out. You'll be the only one buying the book so no charge-back risk.

[dkersten]

> I don't get what you mean by "buy it directly". You don't want the book and you don't want to be buying things for yourself using illegitimate money.

I took it to mean buying the gift cards from Amazon/physical store, rather than going through ebay.

[throwaway0a5e]

I missed the context of the parent comment. In that case you would be using stolen CCs or something like that to buy the gift card codes. Then you'd use the gift card balance to buy the "book" from Amazon with proceeds going to an account you control. The charge-back will go to the gift card seller if the $5-50 transaction is noticed at all.

[jklein11]

Money laundering typically implies taking illegitimate sources of income and making them seem legitimate. In this case you could sell yourself $100 gift cards for $120. You wouldn’t even necessarily have to send yourself a gift card. You now have a legit source of income aka your eBay sellers account for illegal income.

[gruez]

And the IRS is totally cool with you selling thousands of dollars of gift cards each week with no corresponding invoices on how you obtained them? Money laundering business tend to be cash based with high margins (eg. car wash), so you only need to buy $10 worth of supplies to launder $1000 worth of cash.

[mywittyname]

There's probably enough money on the books to acquire the "inventory". Especially if the "company" never pays out the profits.

I.e, a $10,000 outside "investment" allows you to sell 100, $100 gift cards for $120. Those profits get reinvested on the books, and now you have $12,000 to sell 120, $100 gift cards. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[gruez]

That's still sort of pointless because you need to generate a ton of turnover, which increase costs (credit card processing fees) and generally raises suspicion. With a carwash you might only need 1000 fake car washes at $60 each ($60,000 turnover) each to launder $50,000, but with the amazon gift card scheme you'll need to do $250,000 in turnover which is suspiciously high for a small business selling gift cards.

[mywittyname]

$250k per month is $3 million a year. That's not high revenue for a mom-and-pop online reseller. Especially given the margins for typical resellers. Plus, it's far more efficient than something like a car wash. You can have one automated platform that sells through various businesses to keep revenue figures where you need them. So if you want to stay under $50k/y revenue, then split the sales among five various "companies."

With a car was, 1000 washes, at 5m per wash is 84 hours of active operating time. This creates an upper limit on the amount of money that can reasonably flow through the company, since 84 hours is roughly 3 hours a day of utilization per month. You might be able to get by with about double that many washes without raising suspicion. But all it takes is a peak at the company's water bill to determine how accurate that figure really is.

Plus the operating expenses are much higher, as it requires a specialized building, land, etc. Whereas the online retail requires a computer and some software. It's easier to move and hide. There's just so many benefits to using online retailers over brick and mortar operations.

[gruez]

>$250k per month is $3 million a year. That's not high revenue for a mom-and-pop online reseller

What kind of a mom and pop store sells $3M year in amazon gift cards?