Without a doubt, Amazon.com is one of the leading retailers in the world today. This past year, the company made the top 10 in Forbes’ list of the 250 largest retailers in the world for the first time. Perhaps more remarkably, some analysts predict that sales on Amazon account for over 51 cents of every dollar spent online in the United States. With Americans now spending over $400 billion annually in online sales, Amazon’s share of the market is particularly impressive.
With that much money floating around, however, unscrupulous characters were sure to follow. This is especially true given that over two-thirds of the sales taking place on Amazon are made through third-party sellers. These sellers are required to provide relatively sparse identifying information to open a seller account – thus making illicit sales that much easier to accomplish in Amazon’s online marketplace.
