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by mywittyname 1988 days ago
How can the IRS be satisfied when someone else's identity is being used? It doesn't make sense because the launderer is still in possession of dirty, now stolen, money.

I'm guessing they are using the identify of "real" authors to bypass some kind of check Amazon has on new accounts selling books from unknown authors. Otherwise, what you're saying makes sense.
1 comments
gruez 1988 days ago
Not sure, maybe amazon doesn't require that the author be the same person as the entity selling the books (eg. LLC)? That way the IRS only really sees that Bob is getting his income from Bob's Books LLC, but unless they dig deeper they wouldn't know that Bob's Books LLC is impersonating Famous Writer.

edit: this is incorrect, see thread below.

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mywittyname 1988 days ago
But Bob isn't getting the tax bill, which is my point. The tax bill is going to Famous Writer, who is most certainly going to contest the bill, and will probably win. Now the IRS doesn't get their money, so they are not satisfied.

The whole idea behind money laundering is to actually pay the taxes on the ill-gotten gains to prevent you from being hit with charges relate to tax fraud, which are certain to stick.

The fact that they are operating in this manner indicates that they are not scared of the IRS, probably because they are not operating in the USA. Thus, the clearly system isn't designed for tax evasion purposes. They must have some other reason for operating in such a manner. The only thing I can think of is they are trying to bypass Amazon checks. Presumably they used to just create a fictitious LLC to do this under the name of a random name, but eventually were foiled by Amazon's automated systems, so they changed tactics.

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gruez 1988 days ago
>But Bob isn't getting the tax bill, which is my point. The tax bill is going to Famous Writer, who is most certainly going to contest the bill, and will probably win. Now the IRS doesn't get their money, so they are not satisfied.

Why would it go to Famous Writer? I skimmed the article and it only say the author on the product page is Famous Writer. If Famous Writer wrote it, but then signed over all the rights to Bob's Books LLC, then Famous Writer would be the author, but all the proceeds/tax bills will go to Bob's Books LLC.

As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the first place? Probably because an unheard of author selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be suspicious, but if he was famous it would be less so.

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mywittyname 1988 days ago
> Why would it go to Famous Writer?

From the article:

> Reames said Amazon refuses to send him a corrected 1099, or to discuss anything about the identity thief.

The writer in question received a 1099, which states that he earned the proceeds from this book, and the IRS is going to require him to pay taxes on those earnings.

> As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the first place? Probably because an unheard of author selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be suspicious,

The author says this book made much more than any of his other books:

> Reames is a credited author on Amazon by way of several commodity industry books, although none of them made anywhere near the amount Amazon is reporting to the Internal Revenue Service.

They (the hackers) impersonated the author because they had access to his information via his publisher. Thus, they could bypass Amazon's normal vetting process for self-published books.

This is a terrible money laundering scheme (since it doesn't actually result in legitimate money), but it's a very good theft scheme.

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