Update:1
It appears the whole article has been deleted. Not sure what happened but will keep you all updated
Original:
I found an article/image about a person's investigation into people making fraud companies to make millions on Amazon. I know a lot people shop at Amazon and thought it was a good PSA. (Although many already knew about it )
A quick summary:
Here is the first half of the article:
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___there's more____
The rest can be found here:
Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/OmIsA
Lock if old or source isn't legit.
It appears the whole article has been deleted. Not sure what happened but will keep you all updated
Original:
I found an article/image about a person's investigation into people making fraud companies to make millions on Amazon. I know a lot people shop at Amazon and thought it was a good PSA. (Although many already knew about it )
A quick summary:
A few Amazon Employees are gaming the system to form fake companies and sell products. The evidences showed a few different diet/protein/supplements companies are formed under the name of one person living at an address near Amazon's headquarters. He has even posted his girlfriend in a Doctor's outfit to verify as approved by a physician for another product. On top of this, he has made multiple accounts that give 5 star rating reviews to all his products and 1 star rating to all his competitor products. The person also asks the people who bought the products to give 5 star rating, and in return, a FREE product will be given. (ONLY 5 stars). People that claim, the products are a scam.. are being threatened with a lawsuit. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/amazon-com-seller-asks-judge-to-unmask-negative-reviewers/ This person clearly knows the system, and would have gotten away because how many people are going to check as 'some of you' here do? They will look at reviews, they will see that his products are "Best Seller" on amazon, and etc. **it still says it**
Amazon needs to step up and protect.. the buyers but also other sellers.
Here is the first half of the article:
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When a prominent Amazon seller explained to me the rampant fraud that happens on Amazon, it opened up the floodgates to an interesting investigation. He pulled up companies that were practicing obvious fraud, all while Amazon turned a blind eye.
According to some Amazon sellers, review fraud on Amazon is rampant and obvious, and it fools a lot of people into buying fraudulent products, all while making scam artists millions of dollars in the process.
For this investigation, this was the product line that kicked it all off for us.
I know your first thought... it's a magic pill fat burner, of course they're full of crap. But that would be missing the point. This is happening in all different industries, it was just so blatantly obvious here that I decided to focus on this.
This has been the top selling fat loss supplement on Amazon for the past year. It's safe to assume they've sold tens of thousands of bottles.
Take a look at their reviews. A TON of 5 stars, plus a good amount of 1 stars,but overwhelmingly still 5's. Over the past 6 months, many more people have caught onto the practices and posted about it with 1 star reviews, but previously it was almost all 5 stars.
What initially threw up red flags on this listing is how quickly it shot to the top. Gaining hundreds and eventually thousands of unverified 5 star reviews at an incredible rate. At the same time, many of the other top sellers began getting hit with unverified 1 star reviews.
I could find nothing about UberVita selling anywhere except Amazon, and their history there was very young.
So, I started looking into who is behind UberVita. It's owned by a man named Sam Keeler living a couple hours from Seattle, in Manson, WA.
This is important for a few reasons, which I'll tie in over the next couple images.
It was hard to find much information on Sam, but here's something interesting. There apparetly is/was an employee at Amazon by the name of Sam Keeler.
This could be complete coincidence. But the Sam Keeler that owns UberVita very clearly knows what he's doing and it appears he has very extensive knowledge of the Amazon system. Could this be knowledge gained from being an employee?
Again, it could be a complete coincidence, but here's one of the addresses we found tied to a company owned by the same Sam Keeler from UberVita.
As you can see, it's just a short drive from the Amazon office in Seattle.
Looking into the reviews, there was a common theme. Many of the reviewers that left glowing reviews for UberVita had also left glowing reviews for products from a company called Eden Pond, and had left not a single other review.
I was already familiar with Eden Pond Labs because that was one of the companies we found while investigating Sam Keeler.
Now, it was time to look in to Eden Pond Labs.
___there's more____
The rest can be found here:
Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/OmIsA
Lock if old or source isn't legit.