The rise of Amazon FBA scams & Amazon FBA automation
In this day and age you have to be very careful when purchasing goods and services online, because the art of scamming, is more prolific then ever.
Pretty much every single day that I connect to the internet, I get messaged or approached by somebody that is just looking to scam me out of my money, typically by making false promises about how much I can earn with a new crypto coin or trading method, and in order for me to do this, all I need to do for them to reveal their secrets, is transfer them a couple of thousand dollars.
Now whilst that type of scamming scenario might be obvious to you and I, scammers are becoming increasingly clever about the techniques and strategies that they use to make false promises in exchange for you sending them a bit of money.
Unfortunately, the type of people that just want to take your money and don’t really care about what you get in return, they’re everywhere – they’re in the crypto world, they’re in the foreign exchange and trading worlds… and they’re in the Amazon FBA world.
“Scamming” people when it comes to Amazon FBA, has historically been done in the form of “fake gurus”, where the guru releases a training course despite the fact they’ve never sold a single product with Amazon FBA, they have no results or experience of selling anything online, and because of that, they don’t have a clue of how to teach Amazon FBA to beginners!
Over the past 5 years I’ve seen plenty of gurus with very limited experience start pushing courses onto unsuspecting victims by showing fake screenshots, making false promises or just straight up lieing.
Unfortunately, if one scammer gets outed and disappears with a boat load of money, another one soon pops up with an even more sophisticated way of tricking people, with something known as “Amazon FBA Automation” being the latest method.
What is Amazon FBA automation?
Amazon FBA automation is a scheme where you hand over anywhere between $10k and $100,000, and in exchange, an Amazon FBA private label business is setup and run on your behalf.
You don’t need to do any work other than send over that initial investment, and then wait for the profits to come rolling in.
Sounds great right?
Well, in theory… yes. But the reality is that these Amazon FBA automation schemes are by and large scams. And that’s because in addition to that initial up front setup fee that you’re charged by the scammer, you also need to pay them a % of the revenue that you generate for each sale that you make. That’s right – revenue, not profit.
If the Amazon FBA automation business is even setup in the first place – which sometimes it isn’t – the chances of people actually seeing any profit at all is minute, because in addition to Amazon’s fees and advertising costs, you’ve also got to pay your SCAMMER fees, which come from sales proceeds, NOT profits. And because of that, many people invested in these automation scams have found themselves owning businesses that are heavily indebted to the people running them, rather than being the cash cows that they profess to be.
Most people after doing a bit of research online, realise that these Amazon FBA automation businesses are complete scams, and they understand that if you really want a profitable private label business, you need to put in the work yourself – Amazon FBA is not a get rich quick scheme. But with that said, there is a small proportion of people that unfortunately either didn’t do the research, or they were so blinded by the promises of earning huge sums of money for doing very little, that they ignored what they read.
The Kevin David Amazon FBA Automation scam
One of the biggest Amazon Automation companies that made a tonne of money was owned by Amazon FBA guru Kevin David.
If you’ve been interested in Amazon FBA over the past year, you will undoubtedly have seen one of Kevin’s (and his partner, David Arnett) adverts on Youtube.
These ads led to a webinar where Kevin David would claim that in exchange for a small fee, his company would setup an Amazon FBA automation business on your behalf, guaranteeing you huge stacks of cash.
Surprise surprise, this just simply wasn’t true, and resulted in tonnes of people losing their initial investments and more… in fact, so many people were scammed, that they reported what happened to the regulator in the hope that they’d get some of their money back.
Well, their wishes came true because in November 2022, the US’s Federal Trade Commission (which is similar to the UK’s trading standards), took action against DK Automation and its owners Kevin David and David Arnett for using unfounded claims of big returns to entice people into investing in their Amazon FBA automation scheme, as well as cryptocurrency. The pair were promising people that they’ve be able to generate passive income on autopilot, when the truth was that very few customers made a profit at all.
To make matters even worse, the FTC found that consumers had been misled by the Amazon Automation company’s fake reviews on trustpilot, which had been posted en masse in order to hide all of the negative reviews, and that the pair were also running a cryptocurrency trading bot company also promising profits on autopilot.
In total, the FTC estimated that over the past 15 months, people lost a total of $575m to cryptocurrency investment scams alone, so they weren’t looking upon the pair favourably…
As punishment for running these 2 scams and for ignoring multiple penalty notices & warnings that the FTC had previously sent, Kevin David and David Arnott were fined nearly $53m, which was partially suspended to $2.6m, due to their inability to pay… hmm, considering these 2 drive around in lambos and have million dollar apartments, I’m a little unsure of that….
Pleasingly, the Amazon FBA automation website that these two guys operate has now shut down, but there are still tonnes more of them out there, all making false promises.
So my advice to you guys is… if you want to have your own Amazon FBA business, realise that you need to put in the work up front, you need to learn how to do it yourself, and you need to learn from somebody trustworthy with a track record.
Whoever you choose to learn from, do your diligence, ensure that they actually sell on Amazon, show their results & know what they’re talking about. If something sounds far too good to be true – e.g. by promising you 6 figure sums whilst you do absolutely nothing, then apply a bit of sceptisim and tread carefully.
And above all, DON’T do these Amazon FBA automation schemes because 99 times out of 100 they don’t work, and they’ll end up creating a business that requires you to keep throwing money into a bottomless pit.
If you want to learn how you can create an Amazon FBA business yourself , then check out my free training where I run through my exact 5 step strategy that I’ve repeatedly followed to continue launching successful products.
Or, if you’re ready to begin your journey and want to start with the best chances of success & be mentored by me, check out the Smashers Academy.
P.s. if you want to learn more about my journey (highs and lows), check out my Amazon FBA review here.
