Ziemowit Pierzycki bought a $1500 used lens from an Amazon seller who turned out to be a scammer with an ingenious trick: the crook researched a recently widowed person across town and sent them a parcel with a couple of baking mats addressed to the deceased “or current resident.”
The widow signed for the parcel, and thus Amazon saw that the shipper had sent something out with a valid tracking number, and that the USPS tracking system reported that the item had been signed for, and refused to process a claim for fraud, closing the trouble-ticket and telling Pierzycki to buzz off.
The scam only works because Amazon’s anti-fraud system only validates the shipping city and the tracking ID, but doesn’t consider the actual address or the weight of the shipped parcel (the parcel weighed 8 ounces, while the lens weighs 3.2 lbs). Somehow the scammer figured this out.
My guess is that since this scam was conducted across state lines using the US mails, Pierzycki could involve the US Postal Inspectors, but that’s a long and slow process compared to getting an Amazon refund. Alternatively, Pierzycki could ask for a refund from his credit-card company, which might trigger some in-depth human scrutiny from Amazon.
