Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $ 1.5 million • The Register
A 36-year-old man from Portage, Mich., Was arrested Thursday for allegedly renting thousands of textbooks from Amazon and selling them rather than returning them.
Andrew Birge, US District Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said Geoffrey Mark Hays Talsma has been charged with mail and email fraud, transporting stolen goods across state lines, aggravated identity theft and lying to the FBI.
Three alleged co-conspirators have also been charged: Gregory Mark Gleesing, 43, and Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, 25, both of Portage, Mich., And Paul Steven Larson, 32, of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
From January 2016 to March 2021, according to the indictment, Talsma rented textbooks from the Amazon Rental program in order to sell them for a profit. The indictment describes what happened as “a sophisticated fraud scheme”.
Talsma allegedly disguised her identity by creating multiple customer accounts with different names, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. He allegedly did so to get around Amazon’s 15-pound limit on textbook rentals.
His alleged fraud scheme involved the use of Amazon gift cards to rent textbooks and prepaid MyVanilla Visa cards with minimum credit balances to cover the redemption price charged for books not returned.
“These gift cards and MyVanilla Visa cards did not contain names or other means of identifying him as the person renting the textbooks,” the indictment says. Geoffrey Mark Talsma made sure that the MyVanilla Visa cards did not have sufficient credit balances or even no balances when the rental of the textbooks was overdue so Amazon could not collect the purchase price of the book from. these cards. “
As the scheme progressed, according to the indictment, Talsma “recruited individuals, including the defendants Gregory Mark Gleesing, Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa and Paul Steven Larson, as well as others known to the grand jury. , to enable him to use their names and mailing addresses to continue to receive rental manuals in quantities well above the fifteen pound limit. “
Talsma called Amazon customer service and claimed that instead of the ordered manuals, he received other items that could not be returned by post, such as flammable items. Or he would pretend he never received any textbooks, in the hope that Amazon would credit him for the goods not received and forget about the rental. And later, he allegedly taught Gleesing, Dhanoa, and Larson to do the same.
The titles taken included “Compensation” by Jerry Newman, Barry Gerhart and George Milkovich, which lists a buyout price of $ 172.05, and “Economics,” by Campbell McConnell, Stanley Brue and Sean Flynn, which lists a buyout price. from $ 108.00.
The scheme appears to have worked quite well: the indictment says the four suspected crooks stole 14,000 textbooks worth over $ 1.5 million.
If convicted, Talsma faces a substantial prison sentence: up to 20 years for each charge of mail and electronic fraud; up to 10 years for the transport of stolen goods; and up to five years for lying to the FBI. If convicted of aggravated identity theft, that would add a maximum sentence of four consecutive years, with the other sentences generally being concurrent. ®