[kuroguro]

Just fraud, not laundering. They're solving the problem of how to effectively cash out credit cards. Selling items in someone else's platform has multiple upsides:

1. it's a large trusted platform, so the victim's bank is less likely to freeze the transactions

2. multiple items with arbitrary pricing means maxing out each card is simpler

3. the platform will likely have to eat the charge-backs, so where ever the seller receives money from Amazon is relatively safe for a while to further convert into crypto or whatever

4. because of the size of the platform you can keep creating new accounts indefinitely - they cannot possibly vet all new sellers - this is probably where the stolen identities for authors come in. Amazon must be doing some basic sanity checks / credit score lookups or something similar - hence they need real peoples names / SSNs.

I've seen similar things on app stores / freelancer sites etc. Yes, the accounts get flagged after a while, but there's usually enough time to cash out and creating a new one isn't that hard.

[elliekelly]

How is this not money laundering? It is most definitely money laundering. The stolen money arrives in a bank account appearing “clean” because it was “earned” via Amazon book sales. The true origin of the illicit cash is now obscured and within the mainstream financial system.

[kuroguro]

That just seems short sighted as the seller's account would be tracked down sooner or later. Entering your real details on a receiving account is way too risky.

It would be possible to launder with a similar setup - just not with stolen cards but with prepaid cash/crypto ones so amazon doesn't flag the account for charge-backs. But then there's no real need to steal the book author's identity. You could just put your own name or a pseudonym on it. For a 1099 to arrive they've clearly entered the stolen SSN somewhere. You'd want your own SSN there to prove to the IRS that you've made the money... (and then you'd want to pay the taxes).

[elliekelly]

Not if you’re transferring the funds to a non-US account via wire transfer. They time it perfectly so the money is in and out of the person’s account before the person even realizes it and by the time they do it’s too late. The money is gone.

[kuroguro]

I guess it could be. Either that or I'm overestimating the thief's long term planning ability :)

Still - if they're not paying the taxes I wouldn't call it laundering.

[elliekelly]

Thats an odd distinction to draw. The definition of money laundering has nothing to do with taxes.

[dralley]

Exactly. The same kind of money laundering happens on Steam as well. Buying and selling CS:GO skins and trading cards or whatever for hundreds or thousands of dollars through a trading platform not designed to care about shady transaction patterns.