Source: Newsweek
A 22-year-old European man was arrested last Saturday after Amazon discovered that he had been returning packages filled with dirt. James Gilbert Kwarteng scammed the company out of an estimated $370,000 (€300,000) by weighing dirt to match the weight of the product he had purchased before sending it back, receiving his refund, then selling the item(s) he had purchased for profit.
Source: El Español
With El Español reporting this incident as “the biggest Amazon scam ever recorded in Europe,” it’s baffling how long it took for Amazon to realize what was going on. According to the company’s sales policy, refunds for products are issued when a customer makes a claim, then sends back his/her package(s). The issue here is rather than the boxes being checked immediately to verify whether or the not all returns are legitimate, these packages instead sit around in a warehouse for far too long. However, with Amazon’s recently revised return policy, an employee in Barcelona detected the fraud after he opened one of Kwarteng’s ‘returns,’ finding nothing but dirt. Although Kwarteng was eventually apprehended by investigators and appeared in court, he was later released on bail of €3,000 ($3,300).
Amazon revising its return policy is a step in the right direction for preventing and detecting scams like this in the future. However, with the sheer amount of returns that need to be processed and handled in any given day, some fraud is bound to slip through the cracks. Hopefully Amazon will be able come up with a more airtight strategy of deterring amateur con artists such as Kwarteng from honing his/her craft.
