Practical Fraud Prevention

Chapter 17. Marketplace Attacks: Collusion and Exit

’Cause tonight is the night when two become one…

Spice Girls¹

Collusion is exactly what it sounds like; it occurs when accounts on a marketplace collude to exploit the platform in order to benefit themselves. In this case, you would say the buyer and the seller are both in on the fraud. The benefit is sometimes directly financial, but it can also be to gain an undeserved reputation boost such as through fake reviews, or it can take the form of money laundering. The accounts involved may in fact be operated by the same fraudster, or by two different fraudsters working together, or by a fraud ring. Gig economy fraudsters may also play a role in the attack.

From the fraudster perspective, marketplaces might as well be made for collusion. There’s so much you can do, if you don’t care about the marketplace’s terms and conditions, mission, or ecosystem. We’ll look at the main categories of schemes and then discuss how the fraudster gig economy supports many of these types of fraud.

Note

Before we start, it’s worth distinguishing between collusion and conspiracy, though both are relevant here and you may find both in play in the same fraudulent scenario:

Collusion

Within the context of fraud prevention, a state of shared credentials between buyer and seller, possibly indicating they are indeed the same person. Collusion may occur both in legitimate and fraudulent scenarios.

Conspiracy

Within the context of fraud prevention, a state ...