brhfl.com

Brian Krebs reports on one of the stranger scams I’ve read about in recent years. Essentially an author’s name (and tax info) was used to publish a book of pure nonsense using CreateSpace, and sell it for an exorbitant price, presumably as part of a money-laundering scheme:

Reames said he suspects someone has been buying the book using stolen credit and/or debit cards, and pocketing the 60 percent that Amazon gives to authors. At $555 a pop, it would only take approximately 70 sales over three months to rack up the earnings that Amazon said he made.

Patrick Reames, the (real) author in question, discovered the whole thing upon being sent a 1099 for massive earnings he hadn’t actually made. A rather convoluted scheme, but it’s easy to see how it wouldn’t be detected for quite some time. Fascinating read.