Jollier
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Sometimes there are situations when you receive a defective product or one that is not what you ordered. In such cases, you contact technical support and expect a refund, the so-called refund. But what if I tell you that this scheme is actively abused and made money on it. In this topic, you will learn what a refund is, as well as how everyone and their dog makes money on it, and of course, how not to fall for scammers! We reveal the fraudulent schemes.
Contents:
Introduction
Refund - a beautiful wrapper for a successful life or a banal scam during training. What is it and how does it work? And why can you lose not only money, but also freedom?
Start
Each of us at least once faced a situation when an online purchase turned out to be unsuccessful. The product did not fit, was defective, or did not arrive at all. This is generally a standard story. In such cases, we contact the store's support and hope for a refund. Usually, when there is proof, it is done without any problems at all.
Refund is a business
But what if I say that there is a whole shadow business with multi-million dollar turnover that promises to return your money or returns it for its products, which they then resell and make money on it? Let's look into this in more detail.
What is a refund?
Refund is a legal procedure for returning money for a product or service. In the world of scammers, the word "refund" has acquired a completely different meaning.
This is a scheme in which scammers promise to return your money for purchases that you actually made. Or, I repeat, return the money for the goods you ordered, in order to resell them later and make money on it. But the point here is that they use illegal methods to deceive sellers, banks or payment systems. At this point, we will analyze several options for how this can all happen.
How do scammers work in refund
Let's consider an example where you are promised a percentage back for the purchased goods.
1. On the Internet, you come across an ad or a message in a messenger "We will return the money for the purchase. 100% guarantee" Sounds tempting, especially if you recently bought something expensive and were not satisfied, or just want to get your money back. We are all people, right? No 2. The scammers will ask you for information about the purchase. Such as the order number, amount, date, and sometimes even access to your account in the store or bank card. Yes, indeed, you don't need to have sympathy in your forehead to understand that you shouldn't give your data, especially access to banking applications, but such guys also exist here, and I must warn you about such possibilities.
3. Using fake documents, fake complaints or hacked accounts, scammers submit a request for a refund on your behalf.
4. You get part of the money back, and the scammers take their small percentage, and it seems, again, I repeat, that everything is fair, but in fact, at this point you have already become an accomplice to the crime and a little further I will tell you about responsibility and give a visual story from the life of my close friend, obviously not made up. The second example I would take is related to training.
How refund training is presented
Beautiful life. Two hours of wasted time per day. Not a dusty job at all, which will suit everyone. After all, there is simply nothing to do there. Money appears out of thin air. And in general, robbing the rich is a good thing. Plus or minus 500 dollars for them. What difference does it make? They won’t notice anything. We will teach you everything, here’s hell, and everyone will be happy. This is approximately how mentors in arbitration advertise their training, not forgetting to post photos and money, hustle and everything that goes with it.
What’s the catch with refund training
? What’s the catch here? It’s trivial that 99.9 and 100 such trainings are a scam for the prepayment for training itself or for the money you need to buy the product for. Be careful. And we’ll fly on. Read the topic to the end, because there will be a bonus scheme that you can be scammed for, so that you don’t fall for it.
How it works from the inside, refund methods
Now let's figure out how it works from the inside. Fraudsters use several methods for refund.
1. Chargeback. They file a complaint with the bank or payment system, claiming that the purchase was made without their consent, providing obviously fake data or receipts, plus sometimes they can play with your banking settings, which I highly recommend not to do.
I think you understand why.
2. Forged documents. They create fake checks, letters or even forge signatures to convince stores to return their money.
3. Account hacking. They gain access to your account in the store and submit a refund request on your behalf, receiving all the profit for themselves.
Why are store database leaks dangerous?
And here is the answer to the question of why headlines like Amazon account database leaked are dangerous, I'm sure you've seen something like this.
What's going on? Why is this bad? Yes, it's trivial, people get a bunch of accounts at their disposal with the ability to return money and with the ability to earn money for them.
4. Forgery of goods. One of the simplest options is to replace the goods that came on the counterfeit. Thus, they open a dispute, during which the store is obliged to return the money and take the goods for themselves, and the fraudster remains with the goods and the money.
5. Store vulnerabilities. Not all stores that you see on the Internet have an excellent anti-fraud system.
What is anti-fraud?
Anti-fraud is a monitoring system created to prevent fraudulent activities.
Who is behind refund schemes?
Who is behind such schemes? Refund is part of a huge industry, organized groups are behind it that earn millions of dollars in the CC of gullible people. They use, at first glance, complex schemes to hide their tracks.
But sooner or later everything will come to light on this channel and they will not get any bread, so subscribe and become part of the Internet front against fraud. Let's continue to deal with the question of why people fall for such schemes.
Why do people fall for scam schemes in refund?
The most banal is:
1. Greed. People want to return money for purchases that they have already made, or learn to work like rich uncles and do not think about the consequences.
2. Ignorance. Many do not understand that refund is a crime and think that this is just a tricky scheme in which you can get your hard-earned money back, but no. At the end of the topic, we will talk about possible liability.
3. Trust. Fraudsters create the appearance of legality. They have websites, reviews and even guarantees. It is clear that a person with at least some experience will laugh at these guarantees, but they can clearly convince an ordinary Internet user and will, in principle, be convincing for them. And this is a problem.
What to do if you have fallen for a refund scam?
What to do in a situation if you have already fallen for it?
1. Stop banal communication. Do not transfer money, do not transfer data and do not follow the instructions of the scammers. Even if you understand that you have already sent part of the funds to the scammer. They will milk you to the last and, trivially, you will lose even more money.
This mantra is simple and clear as day. There are no negotiations with terrorists. And all scammers are terrorists.
2. Check your data Make sure that the scammers have not gained access to your accounts or bank cards Ideally, change your passwords and think about what the scammers could have access to, even in a ghostly chance. Change the password there immediately.
3. If you are asked to be a drop in the scheme and just accept sneakers to your address, refuse such offers immediately.
I have already posted the topic "Who are drops and how long do they live"? Let's not linger. And now the most important thing.
Why is a refund dangerous?
I will answer the question of why it is dangerous.
1. Even if you did not know that the scammers were using illegal methods, you can still be prosecuted for complicity in fraud. After all, ignorance of the law does not exempt from liability, again.
2. Perhaps the main goal of the scammers is that you will lose money. The scammers will either steal your data, withdraw money from the card, or even take out a loan using your data. If this topic is interesting, how they do it, what Pushkin cards are, I am sure that you have heard about this more than once. Write your opinion in the comments, we can analyze this issue as well.
3. You ruin your reputation. If stores, banks or someone else finds out that you participated in the scheme, you will simply get banned and go to the blacklist.
And this is not the worst sanction, believe me. There are people of fairly high rank, and such incidents that happen, it would seem, they happen not only to ordinary people, believe me. Because of this story, there were even dismissals, so be careful.
How to protect yourself?
How to protect yourself in these situations?
1. Do not trust promises on the Internet. If something sounds too good to be true, then most likely it is. Remember, no one will ever give you free cheese, because it is only in a mousetrap.
2. Do not transfer data. Never give your personal data, card details or access to accounts in general to some left and unfamiliar people.
3. Use legal methods. That's all. If you want to get your money back for a purchase, contact the store or bank support directly, and do not use unclear intermediaries. There are already schemes on the network on how to properly contact technical support to get the maximum chance of success.
Why don't stores and banks fight refunds?
And a smart person will ask, why don't stores and banks fight refunds?
After all, this is a direct violation of the law, plus losses for their business. Answer. Stores fight refunds, but they can never foresee all the risks and threats. With a huge amount of goods, like on Amazon or something similar, for example, it is simply physically impossible to create a system that will not be used for their own selfish purposes by people who actually buy the goods.
The fraud system on Amazon is developing by leaps and bounds. And indeed, making a refund in 2525 has become much more difficult than in 2024. And the problem here is not that people have forgotten how to do it, but that the system is developing and anti-fraud is improving. Therefore, I definitely cannot say that stores are not fighting the problem.
It is precisely for this reason that all popular stores have begun to introduce a fairly high-level anti-fraud system. And that's why we have a bunch of trainers who can refund your goods and take a percentage for it. After the story with life, I will tell an additional blog about how people are cheated during training and all that stuff.
A story from the life of my friend who got into a refund
The story from life is quite simple and banal. This is a story from the life of my friend, which is connected with a ref.
Back in his distant student years, a person was offered to simply accept and transfer iPhones to a certain place to certain people. My friend's task was to simply receive the goods in his hands and then transfer them. Nothing else was required. For such a seemingly easy job, they paid pretty well. And when you are a student, such a part-time job seems like manna from heaven to you. Just accepted the goods, gave them away, took the money.
That's it, I went for a walk, had a beer. More or less that's how it looked. And again, at that moment, since there wasn't much money, or there was no full understanding of what the main problem and danger might be, the situation began to take on a completely different color. After the last job, as the goods were sent to the middleman, he disappeared. There was no more work. No one got in touch. And it turned out that the person to whom my friend transferred the goods was just a front man, or a drop in the bucket, who sold the goods further and gave all the profit, let's say, to his employer, my friend.
And a situation occurred in which the person who was supposed to sell the goods simply scanned them for 50 thousand batches. Yes, there can be so much money there at the moment that a drop is trusted with goods worth 50 thousand dollars because of the employer's stupidity. Or no, it doesn't matter. The very fact is that the person simply took the goods for 50 pieces. What happened to this person next, I have no idea, my friend doesn't know either.
But the interest here falls on the employer, who subsequently went to the investigative committees and proved that he was just an intermediary and was not at all guilty of this whole story. After all, the point here is that stores will not tolerate when money is stolen from their pockets. And the moral is quite simple. My friend got away with it and it was just a fright, in fact. There were no sanctions at all.
But my thought comes down to the fact that my friend was lucky, and you will not be lucky. So don't even think about starting. It's all such a big random - will he be lucky, unlucky, will he catch, will not catch, will they find you, will they not. I would not advise playing these games.
Bonus scam scheme on refund
The essence of the scheme comes down to the fact that a person offers to teach you how to refund. And the conditions look something like this. You do not pay for anything at all. You completely receive all the information. How the work will be done and so on and so forth. All you have to do is pay for the goods in the store that the person offers.
That is, literally, you are offered to pay for the goods without any guarantees and are given nothing in return. Just ephemeral information, the veracity of which is impossible to verify. And what is the deception here? It is trivial that this store belongs to the person with whom you are communicating. That's all. What happens next? I don't think much needs to be explained, but you will simply be told that the goods will be delivered soon. Or they will say that in the worst case, you will sell the goods, and the teacher himself will reimburse you for the difference.
But nothing like that will happen, you will simply be told something like that the scheme did not work, or something like that. But as you know, scammers do not stop there. In 9 out of 10 cases, they will not stop. They will continue to milk you in various ways for commissions, for payment for delivery of goods, for acceleration of delivery of goods. Or, when the goods will be on their way to you for a week or two, somehow they will be delayed, they will tell you "Let's work a second time, we already have a prepared offer, everything is bought, we only need a financial investment from you."
And this is how people really get big money, because in order to refund the goods, you must first buy it. That is, in order to return a thousand dollars, or nine hundred, however much the goods cost, it makes no difference, you must spend this thousand and take the risk upon yourself. So, conclusion.
Conclusion
Refund is not just a scam, it is a dangerous scheme that can ruin your life. Don't fall for beautiful promises and always think about the consequences. And remember, if you don't know who the mammoth is in the scheme, then you are most likely the mammoth.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Topic start
- Refund is a business
- What is a refund?
- How do refund scammers work?
- How is refund training presented?
- What's the catch with refund training?
- How it works from the inside, refund methods
- Why are store database leaks dangerous?
- What is antifraud?
- Who is behind the refund schemes?
- Why do people fall for refund scams?
- What to do if you fell for a refund scam?
- Why is a refund dangerous?
- How to protect yourself?
- Why don't stores and banks fight against refunds?
- A story from the life of my friend who got into a refund
- Bonus scheme scam on refund
- Conclusion
Introduction
Refund - a beautiful wrapper for a successful life or a banal scam during training. What is it and how does it work? And why can you lose not only money, but also freedom?
Start
Each of us at least once faced a situation when an online purchase turned out to be unsuccessful. The product did not fit, was defective, or did not arrive at all. This is generally a standard story. In such cases, we contact the store's support and hope for a refund. Usually, when there is proof, it is done without any problems at all.
Refund is a business
But what if I say that there is a whole shadow business with multi-million dollar turnover that promises to return your money or returns it for its products, which they then resell and make money on it? Let's look into this in more detail.
What is a refund?
Refund is a legal procedure for returning money for a product or service. In the world of scammers, the word "refund" has acquired a completely different meaning.
This is a scheme in which scammers promise to return your money for purchases that you actually made. Or, I repeat, return the money for the goods you ordered, in order to resell them later and make money on it. But the point here is that they use illegal methods to deceive sellers, banks or payment systems. At this point, we will analyze several options for how this can all happen.
How do scammers work in refund
Let's consider an example where you are promised a percentage back for the purchased goods.
1. On the Internet, you come across an ad or a message in a messenger "We will return the money for the purchase. 100% guarantee" Sounds tempting, especially if you recently bought something expensive and were not satisfied, or just want to get your money back. We are all people, right? No 2. The scammers will ask you for information about the purchase. Such as the order number, amount, date, and sometimes even access to your account in the store or bank card. Yes, indeed, you don't need to have sympathy in your forehead to understand that you shouldn't give your data, especially access to banking applications, but such guys also exist here, and I must warn you about such possibilities.
3. Using fake documents, fake complaints or hacked accounts, scammers submit a request for a refund on your behalf.
4. You get part of the money back, and the scammers take their small percentage, and it seems, again, I repeat, that everything is fair, but in fact, at this point you have already become an accomplice to the crime and a little further I will tell you about responsibility and give a visual story from the life of my close friend, obviously not made up. The second example I would take is related to training.
How refund training is presented
Beautiful life. Two hours of wasted time per day. Not a dusty job at all, which will suit everyone. After all, there is simply nothing to do there. Money appears out of thin air. And in general, robbing the rich is a good thing. Plus or minus 500 dollars for them. What difference does it make? They won’t notice anything. We will teach you everything, here’s hell, and everyone will be happy. This is approximately how mentors in arbitration advertise their training, not forgetting to post photos and money, hustle and everything that goes with it.
What’s the catch with refund training
? What’s the catch here? It’s trivial that 99.9 and 100 such trainings are a scam for the prepayment for training itself or for the money you need to buy the product for. Be careful. And we’ll fly on. Read the topic to the end, because there will be a bonus scheme that you can be scammed for, so that you don’t fall for it.
How it works from the inside, refund methods
Now let's figure out how it works from the inside. Fraudsters use several methods for refund.
1. Chargeback. They file a complaint with the bank or payment system, claiming that the purchase was made without their consent, providing obviously fake data or receipts, plus sometimes they can play with your banking settings, which I highly recommend not to do.
I think you understand why.
2. Forged documents. They create fake checks, letters or even forge signatures to convince stores to return their money.
3. Account hacking. They gain access to your account in the store and submit a refund request on your behalf, receiving all the profit for themselves.
Why are store database leaks dangerous?
And here is the answer to the question of why headlines like Amazon account database leaked are dangerous, I'm sure you've seen something like this.
What's going on? Why is this bad? Yes, it's trivial, people get a bunch of accounts at their disposal with the ability to return money and with the ability to earn money for them.
4. Forgery of goods. One of the simplest options is to replace the goods that came on the counterfeit. Thus, they open a dispute, during which the store is obliged to return the money and take the goods for themselves, and the fraudster remains with the goods and the money.
5. Store vulnerabilities. Not all stores that you see on the Internet have an excellent anti-fraud system.
What is anti-fraud?
Anti-fraud is a monitoring system created to prevent fraudulent activities.
Who is behind refund schemes?
Who is behind such schemes? Refund is part of a huge industry, organized groups are behind it that earn millions of dollars in the CC of gullible people. They use, at first glance, complex schemes to hide their tracks.
But sooner or later everything will come to light on this channel and they will not get any bread, so subscribe and become part of the Internet front against fraud. Let's continue to deal with the question of why people fall for such schemes.
Why do people fall for scam schemes in refund?
The most banal is:
1. Greed. People want to return money for purchases that they have already made, or learn to work like rich uncles and do not think about the consequences.
2. Ignorance. Many do not understand that refund is a crime and think that this is just a tricky scheme in which you can get your hard-earned money back, but no. At the end of the topic, we will talk about possible liability.
3. Trust. Fraudsters create the appearance of legality. They have websites, reviews and even guarantees. It is clear that a person with at least some experience will laugh at these guarantees, but they can clearly convince an ordinary Internet user and will, in principle, be convincing for them. And this is a problem.
What to do if you have fallen for a refund scam?
What to do in a situation if you have already fallen for it?
1. Stop banal communication. Do not transfer money, do not transfer data and do not follow the instructions of the scammers. Even if you understand that you have already sent part of the funds to the scammer. They will milk you to the last and, trivially, you will lose even more money.
This mantra is simple and clear as day. There are no negotiations with terrorists. And all scammers are terrorists.
2. Check your data Make sure that the scammers have not gained access to your accounts or bank cards Ideally, change your passwords and think about what the scammers could have access to, even in a ghostly chance. Change the password there immediately.
3. If you are asked to be a drop in the scheme and just accept sneakers to your address, refuse such offers immediately.
I have already posted the topic "Who are drops and how long do they live"? Let's not linger. And now the most important thing.
Why is a refund dangerous?
I will answer the question of why it is dangerous.
1. Even if you did not know that the scammers were using illegal methods, you can still be prosecuted for complicity in fraud. After all, ignorance of the law does not exempt from liability, again.
2. Perhaps the main goal of the scammers is that you will lose money. The scammers will either steal your data, withdraw money from the card, or even take out a loan using your data. If this topic is interesting, how they do it, what Pushkin cards are, I am sure that you have heard about this more than once. Write your opinion in the comments, we can analyze this issue as well.
3. You ruin your reputation. If stores, banks or someone else finds out that you participated in the scheme, you will simply get banned and go to the blacklist.
And this is not the worst sanction, believe me. There are people of fairly high rank, and such incidents that happen, it would seem, they happen not only to ordinary people, believe me. Because of this story, there were even dismissals, so be careful.
How to protect yourself?
How to protect yourself in these situations?
1. Do not trust promises on the Internet. If something sounds too good to be true, then most likely it is. Remember, no one will ever give you free cheese, because it is only in a mousetrap.
2. Do not transfer data. Never give your personal data, card details or access to accounts in general to some left and unfamiliar people.
3. Use legal methods. That's all. If you want to get your money back for a purchase, contact the store or bank support directly, and do not use unclear intermediaries. There are already schemes on the network on how to properly contact technical support to get the maximum chance of success.
Why don't stores and banks fight refunds?
And a smart person will ask, why don't stores and banks fight refunds?
After all, this is a direct violation of the law, plus losses for their business. Answer. Stores fight refunds, but they can never foresee all the risks and threats. With a huge amount of goods, like on Amazon or something similar, for example, it is simply physically impossible to create a system that will not be used for their own selfish purposes by people who actually buy the goods.
The fraud system on Amazon is developing by leaps and bounds. And indeed, making a refund in 2525 has become much more difficult than in 2024. And the problem here is not that people have forgotten how to do it, but that the system is developing and anti-fraud is improving. Therefore, I definitely cannot say that stores are not fighting the problem.
It is precisely for this reason that all popular stores have begun to introduce a fairly high-level anti-fraud system. And that's why we have a bunch of trainers who can refund your goods and take a percentage for it. After the story with life, I will tell an additional blog about how people are cheated during training and all that stuff.
A story from the life of my friend who got into a refund
The story from life is quite simple and banal. This is a story from the life of my friend, which is connected with a ref.
Back in his distant student years, a person was offered to simply accept and transfer iPhones to a certain place to certain people. My friend's task was to simply receive the goods in his hands and then transfer them. Nothing else was required. For such a seemingly easy job, they paid pretty well. And when you are a student, such a part-time job seems like manna from heaven to you. Just accepted the goods, gave them away, took the money.
That's it, I went for a walk, had a beer. More or less that's how it looked. And again, at that moment, since there wasn't much money, or there was no full understanding of what the main problem and danger might be, the situation began to take on a completely different color. After the last job, as the goods were sent to the middleman, he disappeared. There was no more work. No one got in touch. And it turned out that the person to whom my friend transferred the goods was just a front man, or a drop in the bucket, who sold the goods further and gave all the profit, let's say, to his employer, my friend.
And a situation occurred in which the person who was supposed to sell the goods simply scanned them for 50 thousand batches. Yes, there can be so much money there at the moment that a drop is trusted with goods worth 50 thousand dollars because of the employer's stupidity. Or no, it doesn't matter. The very fact is that the person simply took the goods for 50 pieces. What happened to this person next, I have no idea, my friend doesn't know either.
But the interest here falls on the employer, who subsequently went to the investigative committees and proved that he was just an intermediary and was not at all guilty of this whole story. After all, the point here is that stores will not tolerate when money is stolen from their pockets. And the moral is quite simple. My friend got away with it and it was just a fright, in fact. There were no sanctions at all.
But my thought comes down to the fact that my friend was lucky, and you will not be lucky. So don't even think about starting. It's all such a big random - will he be lucky, unlucky, will he catch, will not catch, will they find you, will they not. I would not advise playing these games.
Bonus scam scheme on refund
The essence of the scheme comes down to the fact that a person offers to teach you how to refund. And the conditions look something like this. You do not pay for anything at all. You completely receive all the information. How the work will be done and so on and so forth. All you have to do is pay for the goods in the store that the person offers.
That is, literally, you are offered to pay for the goods without any guarantees and are given nothing in return. Just ephemeral information, the veracity of which is impossible to verify. And what is the deception here? It is trivial that this store belongs to the person with whom you are communicating. That's all. What happens next? I don't think much needs to be explained, but you will simply be told that the goods will be delivered soon. Or they will say that in the worst case, you will sell the goods, and the teacher himself will reimburse you for the difference.
But nothing like that will happen, you will simply be told something like that the scheme did not work, or something like that. But as you know, scammers do not stop there. In 9 out of 10 cases, they will not stop. They will continue to milk you in various ways for commissions, for payment for delivery of goods, for acceleration of delivery of goods. Or, when the goods will be on their way to you for a week or two, somehow they will be delayed, they will tell you "Let's work a second time, we already have a prepared offer, everything is bought, we only need a financial investment from you."
And this is how people really get big money, because in order to refund the goods, you must first buy it. That is, in order to return a thousand dollars, or nine hundred, however much the goods cost, it makes no difference, you must spend this thousand and take the risk upon yourself. So, conclusion.
Conclusion
Refund is not just a scam, it is a dangerous scheme that can ruin your life. Don't fall for beautiful promises and always think about the consequences. And remember, if you don't know who the mammoth is in the scheme, then you are most likely the mammoth.
