Fraud Archives | The Digital Reader

What To Do If Your Identity is Stolen and Used for Money Laundering in Createspace or Amazon

22 November, 201923 November, 2019Amazon, Fraud2 Comments

Did you find out the hard way that you were the victim of identity theft after the thief used your info in one of Amazon’s services?...

The Biggest Plagiarism Scandal in the History of eBooks Slipped by Amazon Unnoticed

1 May, 20191 May, 2019Amazon, Fraud, Intellectual Property, Piracy, Uncategorized10 Comments

When news broke a little over two months ago that the Brazilian author person Cristiane Serruya had copied parts of Courtney Milan’s book, The Duchess War,...

IRS, FBI Raid Baltimore Mayor in the Wake of a “Books for Contracts” Corruption Scandal

25 April, 201925 April, 2019Fraud, LawsuitOne Comment

When I reported on Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh taking a leave of absence a few weeks ago following revelations that companies and charities had bought her...

How to Cheat the Kindle Store (and Get Away With it!): The Chance Carter Story

1 June, 201829 June, 2018Amazon, Fraud18 Comments

For quite some time now I have been reporting on Amazon’s over-reliance on poorly programmed bots that punish the innocent while letting scammers run rampant. Today...

Marvel Editor Deceives Public, Gets Promoted to Editor-in-Chief

29 November, 201720 December, 2017FraudOne Comment

Bleeding Cool reported on Tuesday that Marvel Comic’s new editor-in-chief, CB Cebulski, impersonated a Japanese writer 13 years ago while working for Marvel as an editor. From the...

Copyright Trolls Threaten College Students With Million-Dollar Lawsuits, Deportation

18 September, 201620 September, 2016Fraud, Intellectual PropertyOne Comment

For the past several years ethically-challenged companies and law firms have been threatening consumers with legally dubious demands(*) based on questionable evidence(**) of alleged piracy(***). We’ve...

Amazon’s Counterfeit Problem is Also an Opportunity

10 July, 20163 August, 2016Amazon, Fraud6 Comments

CNBC has a report this week which details how Amazon is quickly shifting from a great place to shop and a trusted retailer to being the...

Buy a Book From Packt Publishing, and They’ll Bill You for an Unwanted Subscription

23 June, 201623 June, 2016Fraud, Publishing, Scam9 Comments

Packt Publishing was at one time one of the better technical publishers. They sell their ebooks DRM-free at reasonable prices and used to come highly recommended....

Beware Summaries/Reviews Masquerading as Kindle eBooks

7 June, 201611 June, 2016Fraud, Kindle (platform)2 Comments

The Kindle Store, at one point or another, has been home to just about every type of spam from bundled Wikipedia articles to computer-generated nonsense to...

Amazon Files Suit Against Sellers of Fake Reviews

26 April, 201612 May, 2017Amazon, Fraud, Lawsuit2 Comments

Amazon filed its third round of lawsuits against purveyors of fake product reviews last week. Geekwire and the Seattle Times report that the retailer is suing...

Amazon Comments on TOC Crackdown, Inadvertently Confirms Kindle Unlimited Page Count Scam

14 March, 201612 June, 2017Amazon, Fraud, Scam, Streaming eBooks31 Comments

News broke on Friday that Amazon was cracking down on authors and publishers who had put their TOCs at the end of the Kindle ebook, rather...

Spot Fake Kindle Reviews With FakeSpot

25 January, 201612 May, 2017Amazon, Fraud, Tips and Tricks67 Comments

Amazon has taken many steps to clean up its review section, including suing sellers of fake reviews and forbidding any relationship between author and reviewer, but...

Beware the eBook Catfish

22 October, 201522 October, 2015eBookstore, FraudLeave a comment

The Washington Post has coined a name for publishers who are turning the Kindle Store into their own personal content farm: ebook catfish. A catfish, as Urban...

Amazon Files Suit Against a Thousand Fiverr Users for Selling Fake Reviews

16 October, 201517 October, 2015Amazon, Fraud, Lawsuit24 Comments

In April of this year Amazon did something that it had never done before: it filed a lawsuit against four websites which had sold reviews to marketplace sellers on its site....

Would-Be Barnes & Noble Buyer Settles Fraud Charges

25 September, 201525 September, 2015Fraud3 Comments

Many were surprised when a little-known investment firm announced a buyout offer for B&N early last year. We couldn’t figure out how the G Asset Management had raised the $640 million...