Amazon seizes more than three million counterfeit products as ecommerce giant cracks down on fraud
Amazon has seized more than three million counterfeit products in the last year and referred more than 600 criminals for investigation as the tech firm tries to stamp out fraud.
In its latest Brand Protection Report, the ecommerce giant revealed it has invested more than $900m and had more than 12,000 people—including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators—who were dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners, and their store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse.
As a result, Amazon stopped more than 2.5 million attempts in the past year to create fraudulent selling accounts, preventing these bad actors from publishing a single product for sale.
This is down from more than 6 million attempts the prior year, thanks to robust seller and product vetting, along with efforts to hold bad actors accountable that are deterring them from attempting to sell on Amazon.
“Our team continues to innovate to stay ahead of bad actors while working in partnership with rights owners, law enforcement, and other experts to ensure customers can continue to shop with confidence,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Services. “While we are proud of the progress we have made, we will not stop until we drive counterfeits to zero in our store.”
The company has faced a number of scamming attempts in recent years.
Last October, Morning Wire reported that a scam known as “brushing” may have impacted up to 1m UK households after they received mystery Amazon parcels designed to boost the rankings of third party sellers.
Consumer group Which? said it was concerned at the numbers of households reporting receiving a mystery Amazon package at their home address that they did not order and was not sent by a known person.
The watchdog believed third-party sellers are exploiting Amazon’s highly competitive search ranking system for products – which favours items with high sales volumes and good reviews – by sending items to unsuspecting people and then falsely logging it as a genuine purchase.