2023-11-02 10:26:00
From California to Pakistan. The multinational Amazon filed a complaint on October 30 against individuals residing in the United States and Pakistan, and against several companies, namely Teknobyl Digital, VTLogodesign or Dynamic Digital Solutions. Behind these entities, denounces the firm, counterfeiting and deception companies which target self-published authors.
Imitations and usurpations
The individuals and structures targeted by the complaint are responsible, according to Amazon, for fraudulent maneuvers intended to take advantage of the trust of self-published authors. “ The defendants use Amazon’s trademarks in their domain names and sites to lure victims away from genuine sites and sell them services to help them create, edit and publish their works with Amazon Publishing and KDP “, says the complaint.
She details the stratagems: one company’s website is titled ” Amazon Publishing Office », and takes up the characteristic smile of the brand, or the association white and orange. Same program for “ Amazon Direct Publisher », which also adopts a presentation close to the firm’s platforms.
The desire to deceive continues, Amazon explains, during discussions with authors who have fallen into the trap: a certain “Shane Francis” thus presents Amazon Direct Publisher as “ an Amazon subsidiary that assists authors in the work on their booksfrom writing to editing, including design and publication ».
The same site also provided potentially suspicious authors with a “ certificate of authenticity », « sign » by Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, who makes the company “a subsidiary dedicated to supporting authors and publishers».
Similar manipulations are repeated, from one site to another, with some variations: Amazon Publishing Pros, Amazon Publishing Firm, AMZ Profs or even Amazon Digital Publishing relied on the same levers. In total, Amazon lists 26 websites, operated by various entities, in its complaint.
Deceived authors
After highlighting the techniques of each site, Amazon associates the case of a victim of deception, with the damage suffered. “Thinking she was working with Amazon, victim 1 paid the defendants $4,000 for editorial services advertised“, thus advances the complaint. Another paid a total of $5,000, paid by transfer and credit card.
For certain sites, Amazon indicates that it used an independent investigator, who requested more information on the services offered by the corresponding entities. He then innocently worried about whether the companies were indeed part of the Amazon group. What we assured him with strong messages and certificates of authenticity…
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« We work constantly to prevent bad actors from defrauding our customers, and this complaint against publishing scammers continues that commitment, on behalf of our authors.“, underlines David Naggar, vice-president of Book and Kindle content at Amazon, in a press release.
The firm still indicates that it has “carried out actions against dozens of malicious sites“, but, faced with the multiplication of the latter, adopts “more radical measures to prevent other authors or publishers from being harmed ».
The fakes, real wounds
Amazon accuses 10 individuals and 8 companies of trademark infringement, counterfeiting and usurpation and the cyber squat. The firm’s legal action comes days after India’s Central Bureau of Investigation dismantled various companies in India claiming to work for Amazon.
Call centers in different cities targeted people who thought they were dealing with real Amazon advisors. Around 2,000 victims, in the United States, but also in Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom, would have fallen into the trap, according to the multinational, which collaborated with Microsoft, also affected, to counter this malicious company.
In 2022 alone, according to Amazon figures, 20,000 sites and 10,000 numbers fraudulent phone calls were reported by him. “Amazon will never ask you to make a payment by phone or email – but only on our mobile application, our site or in one of our stores. We will never call to request payment by bank transfer or on another site », recalls the firm in its communication.
Photographie : illustration, Daniel Foster, CC BY-NC 2.0
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