How to protect your business from Amazon seller scams in 2026

Amazon is one of the most profitable places to sell online. It’s also one of the most heavily targeted by scammers. Those two facts are directly connected.

Amazon scams account for around 80% of all phishing attacks impersonating major consumer brands. Scammers show up as fake buyers, fake Amazon employees, fake suppliers, and fake IP claimants. Some want your login credentials. Some want your PPC budget. Some just want your listings gone so their products rank instead.

The good news: most of these scams are identifiable once you know what to look for. This guide covers the most active Amazon seller scams right now, what each one looks like in practice, and what you can do to shut them down before they cost you.

How Amazon scams actually work

The tactics vary, but the goal is almost always the same: exploit a leverage point inside Amazon’s system. Scammers target leverage points including the Buy Box, returns, customer claims, and automated enforcement.

Amazon’s size is part of the problem. A platform processing billions in daily transactions creates countless entry points for fraud. The ease of creating seller accounts and minimal barriers to entry allow scammers to infiltrate and exploit loopholes using convincing language, and when one scheme gets shut down, they pivot to another.

What makes these scams particularly effective is that they’re designed around trust. Sellers trust that Amazon emails are real. Buyers trust that listings are legitimate. Suppliers trust that orders are genuine. Scammers exploit all of it.

The 5 most common Amazon seller scams

1. Phishing and account takeover

Phishing is the oldest trick in the scam playbook, and it still works. Scammers send emails, texts, or make phone calls pretending to be from Amazon, asking sellers to click a link or provide account details to “fix a problem.” The message often includes Amazon branding, professional-looking formatting, and a fake link that leads to a lookalike login page.

The FBI has warned about the threat of account takeover fraud, which led to more than $262 million in reported losses in 2025 alone.

Once a scammer is inside your Seller Central account, the damage can be significant: they can change your bank account details, redirect your payouts, alter your listings, or use the account to run their own scams before Amazon catches on and suspends you instead of them.

Red flags to watch for:

• Emails asking you to “verify” your account or confirm login details
• Generic greetings like “Dear Seller” instead of your name
• Spelling or grammar mistakes in what appears to be an official email
• Links that don’t go to amazon.com when you hover over them
• Urgent threats of account suspension unless you act immediately

What to do: Never click links in unsolicited emails. Go directly to Seller Central through your browser. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your account, use strong unique passwords, and never share your login details with anyone, even someone claiming to be from Amazon.

2. Fake account suspension scams

This one deserves its own category because it’s become one of the most targeted attacks on Amazon sellers. Fraudsters impersonate Amazon representatives and contact sellers to claim their account has been suspended or deactivated, using urgency and fear tactics to manipulate sellers into providing sensitive account information or paying a fee to “reactivate” their account.

The fear of losing your seller account is effective bait. A seller who’s panicking is a seller who isn’t thinking critically.

The key tell: Amazon does not require payment to a third party to “unlock” an account. If payment is requested off-platform to fix a suspension, assume fraud. Real account actions from Amazon appear inside Seller Central, not in cold emails or phone calls demanding wire transfers.

What to do: If you receive a communication claiming your account has been suspended, log in to Seller Central directly and check your Account Health dashboard. If there’s no notice there, the message is fraudulent. Report it to Amazon at reportascam@amazon.com.

3. Listing hijacking (ASIN piggybacking)

Listing hijacking is when unauthorized sellers use your product’s ASIN to create their own listing, pretending to sell the same product. When a customer orders from them, they may receive a fake or inferior product instead. The negative reviews, returns, and account health hits land on your listing, not theirs.

The piggybacking version of this is slightly different: a seller jumps onto your listing legitimately, but sells a counterfeit or misrepresented product. The result is the same. Your brand takes the reputational hit, and the hijacker pockets the sales.

Listing hijacking results in lost sales for the legitimate seller and tarnishes their brand image.

What to do: Monitor your listings regularly for unauthorized sellers. Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry, which gives you tools to report and remove hijackers more quickly. The Transparency program, which assigns unique codes to each physical unit, makes counterfeiting significantly harder.

FeedbackWhiz Alerts, part of Seller 365, monitors your listings 24/7 and sends instant notifications when another seller jumps on your listing or when unauthorized changes appear. It tracks over 250,000 Amazon and Walmart listings and triggers 200,000+ alerts per month for sellers who can’t afford to check manually.

4. Fake buyer claims and return fraud

Not every scam comes from outside the platform. Some of the most financially damaging fraud comes from buyers.

Fraudulent buyers falsely claim that an item never arrived, arrived damaged, or did not match the description, in order to receive a refund or replacement without returning the original product.

Return fraud takes it further. In switch fraud, buyers replace purchased products with counterfeit or damaged items and return them for a refund. This is especially damaging for sellers of high-value goods.

Chargeback fraud is another variant: a buyer disputes a legitimate transaction with their credit card provider, leaving the seller without the payment and the product.

Frequent fraud issues like high return rates or negative feedback manipulation can trigger account warnings and suspensions, harming a seller’s reputation and reducing product visibility.

What to do: Use tracked shipping on every order and keep records of all communications. For high-value items, photograph the product before packing. If a return looks suspicious, escalate it to Amazon rather than refunding automatically. Document everything, since Amazon makes decisions based on paper trails.

5. Fake negative review attacks

Competitors or scammers can flood a seller’s page with fake negative reviews to undermine trust and ranking. This is a targeted attack on your listing’s visibility. Amazon’s algorithm weighs review scores heavily, so even a handful of fraudulent one-stars can push a product off the first page.

The inverse version also happens: sellers buy fake positive reviews to boost their own products, often in markets where they’re competing directly with you. Amazon strictly prohibits fake reviews. Sellers caught engaging in these practices face suspension or a permanent ban.

In 2025, Amazon’s legal actions led to the shutdown of more than 100 websites attempting to facilitate fake reviews and scams targeting its store.

What to do: Monitor your review activity closely. A sudden spike in one-star reviews, especially when they share similar phrasing or appear clustered by date, is a signal to investigate and report. Use Amazon’s “Report Abuse” tool on suspicious reviews and document the pattern when you escalate.

FeedbackWhiz Alerts monitors incoming reviews in real time across Amazon and Walmart marketplaces, flags unusual patterns, and alerts you immediately so you can respond before reviews compound into a ranking problem.

Bonus: Supplier scams and false IP claims

Two more scams worth knowing about, especially for private label and brand sellers.

Supplier fraud: Sellers may purchase inventory from what appears to be a legitimate supplier, only to later face an authenticity complaint they cannot defend because they lack clean invoices or traceability that matches Amazon’s verification expectations. The damage shows up late, and it can be severe: a counterfeit complaint tied to a sketchy supplier can result in listing removal or account suspension. Always demand proper invoices, start with smaller test orders, and avoid large wire transfers without clear documentation.

False IP and counterfeit claims: Competitors can file false counterfeit or infringement claims to suppress a competing offer or take down another listing. Amazon’s own IP policy states that using these tools to unfairly target other sellers is against the rules, but many brands exploit the system anyway. If you receive a counterfeit complaint, pull your invoices and supplier documentation immediately. A strong response backed by a clean paper trail is your best path to reinstatement.

How to report scams on Amazon

If you receive a suspicious message or encounter a scam, here’s how to report it:

To report suspicious communication (emails, calls, texts): Forward the email or details to reportascam@amazon.com. For phone calls and texts, you can also report to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

To report a suspicious product or seller: Log in to your Amazon account, go to the product page, and select “Report incorrect product information,” then choose “This product or content is illegal, unsafe, or suspicious.”

To report suspicious account activity: Go to the “Report Something Suspicious” page in Seller Central and follow the instructions that match your situation.

What to do if your information has already been compromised

If you’ve given out sensitive account or personal information to a scammer, act fast:

• Change your passwords immediately, starting with your Amazon account, email, and banking accounts
• Enable 2FA if you haven’t already
• Contact your bank to flag the account and watch for unauthorized transactions
• Report the incident to Amazon through Seller Central
• Place a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus to prevent identity theft
• File a report with the FTC at IdentityTheft.gov

The faster you move, the more you can limit the damage.

Staying ahead of scams on Amazon

Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 32,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement across 14 countries since its launch in 2020. In 2025, it identified, seized, and disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products worldwide. The platform is investing heavily in fraud prevention, including AI systems that detect phishing websites and flag suspicious listing changes before they reach customers.

But Amazon’s systems don’t protect your account the way active monitoring does. Most sellers who get hurt by scams aren’t hurt because Amazon failed them. They’re hurt because the warning signs went unnoticed for too long.

Keeping your listings clean, your account credentials secure, your supplier documentation airtight, and your review patterns under watch is the practical version of scam protection that actually works.

Protect your listings with FeedbackWhiz Alerts

The hardest part of defending against scams is speed. A hijacker who sits on your listing for 48 hours before you notice has already done real damage. A wave of fake reviews that sits for a week can drop your ranking before you file the first report.

FeedbackWhiz Alerts is built for this. It monitors your listings around the clock and sends immediate notifications for hijacker activity, listing changes, review patterns, Buy Box loss, and account health events. It’s included in Seller 365 alongside nine other tools for sourcing, repricing, profit tracking, and more, starting at $69/month.

Start your 14-day free trial of Seller 365 and get real-time protection running on your account today.