> Reames said Amazon refuses to send him a corrected 1099, or to discuss anything about the identity thief.
The writer in question received a 1099, which states that he earned the proceeds from this book, and the IRS is going to require him to pay taxes on those earnings.
> As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the first place? Probably because an unheard of author selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be suspicious,
The author says this book made much more than any of his other books:
> Reames is a credited author on Amazon by way of several commodity industry books, although none of them made anywhere near the amount Amazon is reporting to the Internal Revenue Service.
They (the hackers) impersonated the author because they had access to his information via his publisher. Thus, they could bypass Amazon's normal vetting process for self-published books.
This is a terrible money laundering scheme (since it doesn't actually result in legitimate money), but it's a very good theft scheme.
From the article:
> Reames said Amazon refuses to send him a corrected 1099, or to discuss anything about the identity thief.
The writer in question received a 1099, which states that he earned the proceeds from this book, and the IRS is going to require him to pay taxes on those earnings.
> As for why bother impersonating Famous Writer in the first place? Probably because an unheard of author selling $500,000 worth of books for $500/each would be suspicious,
The author says this book made much more than any of his other books:
> Reames is a credited author on Amazon by way of several commodity industry books, although none of them made anywhere near the amount Amazon is reporting to the Internal Revenue Service.
They (the hackers) impersonated the author because they had access to his information via his publisher. Thus, they could bypass Amazon's normal vetting process for self-published books.
This is a terrible money laundering scheme (since it doesn't actually result in legitimate money), but it's a very good theft scheme.