So-called reimbursement fraud is becoming a bigger and bigger issue: in a recent online article reports Wirtschaftswoche" about the latest developments and tricks that online retailers should know about. In refund fraud, perpetrators order products on the Internet and later claim never to have received them, thus obtaining a refund from the merchant.
The assessments of the traders are different: While some are not noticing an increase in fraud, according to Wiwo, the Swiss/German tech retailer Galaxus reports an increase, especially since the start of the Corona pandemic. This is plausible, typically electronics assortments are highly susceptible to fraud. Used electronics provider Rebuy, for example, is also said to be strengthening its digital fraud defenses have. According to the Wiwo report, he sees a downward trend in fraud attempts, but notes that credit card fraud is continues to be a problem internationally.
In spring 2021 the Federal Criminal Police Office conducted a raid on seven men suspected of being of belonging to the "German Refund Crew" and of having defrauded online retailers of hundreds of thousands of euros. In some cases, they send back cheaper or older items as returns and keep or sell the more expensive original merchandise. The "German Refund Crew" is said to be in more than. 600 of such cases and offered these Scam even offered in a Telegram group as a service.
A similar case was reported in Dortmund, Germany, where a lone perpetrator targeted online retailers in more than 1.600 cases for a total of 1,5 million Euro has defrauded. Another case involved a Spanish Amazon user who asked the company for 330.000 Euros by buying iPhones ordered, picked up the devices and filled the boxes with soil before sending them back.
The German E-Commerce Association (BEVH) notes that in the year. 2022 increased chargebacks on credit card transactions, especially for amounts under 30 2022 and respectively. 50 Euro. The problem occurs mainly in transactions with buyers from third countries.
Online merchants should be vigilant and use all possibilities of technical protection measures to prevent such fraud attempts from counteract.