Amazon invested $1.2 bn, hired 15,000 people in 2023 to tackle counterfeit

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Online marketplace Amazon invested more than $1.2 billion and hired about 15,000 experts in 2023 to protect the brand, its sellers, and customers from fraud and counterfeit, according to the Amazon 2023 Brand Protection Report.

Amazon said when a customer purchases from the store, they trust they will receive an authentic product, and when businesses choose to sell in the store, they trust Amazon to provide a great selling experience free from competition with bad actors.

"In 2023, Amazon invested more than $1.2 billion and employed more than 15,000 people, including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators, who were dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners, and our store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse," it said.

Amazon said it uses document forgery detection, advanced image and video verification, and other technologies to confirm the authenticity of government-issued identity documents quickly and whether they match the individual applying to sell in the marketplace.

These technologies, it said, coupled with continued innovation in its machine learning-based detection, are deterring bad actors from attempting to create new Amazon selling accounts.

"In 2023, Amazon stopped more than 700,000 bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts, stopping them before they were able to list a single product for sale in our store. This is down from 6 million attempts by bad actors to create new Amazon selling accounts in 2020," the report said.

It added that Amazon identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of more than 7 million counterfeit products worldwide in 2023, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain.

It added that since its launch in 2020, Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 21,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement.

Since 2020, it said, while the number of products available for sale in the store has grown significantly, the platform saw a more than 30 per cent decrease in the total valid notices of infringement submitted by brands.

"Amazon's proactive controls blocked more than 99 per cent of suspected infringing listings before a brand ever had to find and report them," the report said.