Amazon has taken a stand and brought a case against an underground store refund scheme, that "brazenly advertise refund services they fully admit are fraudulent."
The actions of the international fraud organisation, REKK, which is responsible for stealing millions of dollars of products from Amazon’s online stores through systematic refund abuse, has led to Amazon's lawsuit, which not only targets 20 members of REKK, but also seven former Amazon employees who acted as insiders.
REKK is part an underground industry offering fraudulent refunds to users. Buyers purchase an item and pay REKK a fee e.g. 30% of the item's cost, to secure a 'refund'. Instead of handing back the product as part of the refund process, REKK uses several nefarious means, such as socially engineering Amazon customer service, phishing Amazon employees and even unauthorised access to Amazon's systems, in order to obtain a refund without returning the item, after which they receive their fee.
REKK targets Amazon’s online stores in the United States, Canada, and Europe and has publicly stated that it fraudulently refunded over 100,000 orders from retailers (not just Amazon). REKK uses the Telegram accounts “@refundingclub,” “@rekks,” “@rekksupport,” and “@rekkvouches” to advertise their services and liaise with anyone looking to obtain fraudulent refunds. REKK also advertises the same on Nulled (username “rekk”), Reddit (username “rekksalt” and subreddit “r/REKKRefundService”), and Discord (username “rekk#5319”). REKK’s primary Telegram channel, “@refundingclub,” advertises its page as “REKK Refund Service” and had more than 35,600 subscribers.
Amazon spent $1.2 billion in 2022 and employed the services of more than 15,000 people to fight theft, fraud, and abuse across its stores. Part of this involves using machine learning models to proactively detect and prevent fraud, and employing investigators to manually review activity. When fraudulent activity is detected, Amazon alerts customers, terminates accounts, and prevents anyone involved in refund fraud from creating new accounts.
