Seven arrested in Spain for defrauding e-commerce giant Amazon out of 300,000 euros

National Police officers in Spain have dismantled a criminal group that allegedly, more than two years ago, began to defraud the e-commerce giant Amazon through false returns of goods. Seven people between the ages of 68 and 24 have been arrested (five of them are men). Most of them have previous convictions for similar offences, such as fraud and forgery. In addition, there are five other individuals under investigation who have not been arrested yet. Their fraud reportedly resulted in a financial loss of 300,000 euros for Amazon.

Operation Alligator began in March 2023, when the e-commerce giant's legal services filed the complaint. According to sources, the accused (most of them are Spanish, but there are one Moroccan and one Venezuelan) placed orders for products of high value, usually electronic devices such as Apple phones and tablets. Sometimes they used the names of real Valencia-based companies, but would provide their own addresses. To do so, they had opened accounts in the names of third parties and of the companies on Amazon.

Once they received the goods, they would ask for a refund, claiming that the products were faulty or even creating a defect themselves. Another method they used was writing an odd or incorrect delivery address so that the courier would call and ask them to meet them in the street and deliver the package. The fraudsters would then file complaints, claiming that they had not received the product but had still been charged for it. These tricks were repeated with laptops, video games and cameras, in addition to the devices mentioned above, each at a market price higher than 1,000 euros.

Police managed to locate and arrest several individuals in Valencia city, San Antonio de Benagéber (also in the region of Valencia) and Madrid city. During two house searches in Turia, the police seized 114,000 euros in cash, more than 1,500 dollars, six vehicles, numerous mobile phones, computers, cameras and tablets, in addition to a large amount of bank documentation and notes of interest to the investigation.