Textbook Rental Scam
Here’s a story of someone who, with three compatriots, rented textbooks from Amazon and then sold them instead of returning them. They used gift cards and prepaid credit cards to buy the books, so there was no available balance when Amazon tried to charge them the buyout price for non-returned books. They also used various aliases and other tricks to bypass Amazon’s fifteen-book limit. In all, they stole 14,000 textbooks worth over $1.5 million.
The article doesn’t link to the indictment, so I don’t know how they were discovered.
EDITED TO ADD (11/12): Press release.
John • October 20, 2021 6:35 AM
Hmmm…. Fun to watch Amazon and friends try to convince the world that paper books are still of ANY interest!
I can always show up with a memory stick with a pdf and have paper if I REALLY need it?
I give away a memory stick with 5GB of books on ‘soil and health’. Most of the worthwhile stuff on it was written many years before I was born and the ‘word processor’ did not exist and authors had something really important experience to share with their neighbors.
The recent authors who have something real to share, mostly release their stuff free from copyright!!
Lots of fun :).
John