The Guardian reports that you don’t even need a real book to put a title on Amazon and launder money through purchases

Fake books sold on Amazon could be used for money laundering

““Worthless” books priced at up to thousands, of dollars on Amazon.com and which contain only nonsensical text have been identified as possible vehicles for money laundering by an author whose name was, he says, used to send almost $24,000 (£17,200) to an unknown and fraudulent seller.

“Amazon’s self-publishing arm CreateSpace makes it relatively straightforward to publish a title that contains any text, provided that this isn’t “placeholder” or dummy text, and allowing fake books to be sold on the Amazon website at a price chosen by the seller.

“For a highly priced title, the author can earn royalties of up to 60% for a paperback, or 70% for an ebook.”

It’s not easy, but it’s hardly impossible.  And smaller frauds would be harder to spot.

Read the story here.