Report Fraud says criminals posing as Amazon staff took more than £86,000 in nine days, and over half of victims were aged 50 to 79.
Scammers pretending to be Amazon are phoning people and emptying their accounts. Report Fraud, the UK's national reporting service for this kind of crime, says victims lost more than £86,000 in nine days. It recorded 110 reports of Amazon impersonation between October 5 and 14.
The losses averaged more than £9,600 per day. The scam starts with a call claiming there is suspicious activity on your Amazon account. The caller then pushes you to act fast to secure it. That can mean sharing personal documents, downloading remote access software or approving payments. Remote access software lets someone else control your phone or computer from afar.
More than half of the victims were aged between 50 and 79. Chief superintendent Amanda Wolf, head of Report Fraud operations, said fraudsters do best when their approach feels ordinary. A call about an account issue or a delivery problem can catch anyone off guard, she said, especially from a brand people trust.
Urgency is the main warning sign. Wolf said criminals want people to react quickly, while the advice is to take a moment, question what you are told and check it through a trusted route. A real problem with your account will still be there after you hang up and look for yourself.
The material does not say how many of the 110 reports involved money being lost, or how much each person lost. It also does not say whether the calls are still going on.
The steps in the alert box above cover how to handle a call like this. The key point is simple: never use the caller as your way of checking whether the call is real.
If someone calls claiming to be Amazon, hang up and check your account yourself in the official app or website.
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