
Her Amazon Purchases Are Real. The Reviews Are Fake - juokaz
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon-purchases-are-real-the-reviews-are-fake
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Accujack
People doing this may find they are subverting more than Amazon's review
system.

One of the more interesting schemes to smuggle goods into the US is "selling"
things on Ebay or Amazon cheaply and sending the goods to somewhere other than
the buyer's location in the US. The buyer's name/address are correct on the
paperwork, but the shipment is forwarded to them via a package carrier that
doesn't exist or otherwise diverted to the new location.

Whatever the goods are make it through customs without question because they
have the name of a real citizen who is willing to say they're buying the item
on the paperwork.

The sellers apologize and give refunds or compensation (or nothing) for the
items that never arrive at the paid reviewers' houses, then sell the items
which are now stockpiled in the US, never paying an appropriate customs fee
(personal importing vs. commercial) for a nice profit. They also bypass things
like checks for counterfeit goods being imported because there is far less
scrutiny on individual, personal packages than commercial imports.

Using the name/address of a real person who is actually expecting the product
hides the activity from most of the algorithms that search for things like
this.. because they exist, they are where they say they are, they pay taxes,
etc.

So Amazon shills may be inadvertently allowing their identities to be used to
bypass US customs... and potentially also getting scammed out of the purchase
price of whatever they ordered.

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fred_is_fred
I think Jessica may also find that the IRS is real and the idea that she
doesn't need to pay tax on this -- is fake.

