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Nina Kollars - Confessions of an Nespresso Money Mule - DEF CON 27 Conference

Nina Kollars - Confessions of an Nespresso Money Mule - DEF CON 27 Conference on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2020–2025.

At DEF CON 27, Nina Kollars tells how buying Nespresso capsules on eBay led her to investigate fraudsters reselling goods bought with stolen credit cards. She describes her non-technical tracking and reporting efforts.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as an entertaining and informative explanation of the economics of reshipping and stolen-card resale scams.

people recommended it
4
separate months
4
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2020–2025
“here's an excellent defcon talk on what these some groups do”
— clutchdude, Nov 2023, in “Who's Behind the Swat USA Reshipping Service?”

What HN commenters said

7 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

h3xadecima1Jan 2025Recommends

Nina Kollars gave an interesting talk on scammers selling coffee through eBay using stolen credit cards. Signature way of knowing is they're shipped direct from nespresso and the purchase price is 40-50% cheaper than retail. I ordered some keurig pods and experienced the same direct shipping and cheap prices. ▶ this video

in “I made $100K from a dick joke” · View on HN

clutchdudeNov 2023Recommends

In addition to the other commenters, here's an excellent defcon talk on what these some groups do: Nina Kollars - Confessions of an Nespresso Money Mule - DEF CON 27 Conference ▶ this video Essentially, they wait for a buyer of a product to come along to a listing and order it - they'll then buy it using stolen credentials, have it drop-shipped or reshipped to the end user. Everyone but the person with the original card comes out ahead, which is then pushed to all of us via higher fees if they notice and report the fraud.

in “Who's Behind the Swat USA Reshipping Service?” · View on HN

Mountain_SkiesSep 2020Recommends

Nina Kollars had a nice related talk during Defcon on a similar scam buying what she thought was gray market Nespresso pods whose "seller" bought for her using a stolen credit card. They also gave her a free Nespresso machine, presumably to give her motive to keep quiet. ▶ this video

in “The 'brushing' scam that's behind mystery parcels” · View on HN

rozabMay 2020Recommends

Here's a tangentially related def con about the strange economics of that whole scam. Basically, everyone in the chain apart from the cardholder benefits. ▶ this video

in “G2A pays Factorio developer $40k over illegally obtained game keys” · View on HN

ValueAddedRSDec 2022Cites it

3P mule accounts have been a thing on eBay for years and eBay has been very much aware of it since at least 2015 when Brian Krebs wrote about it. [link] See also Confessions of a Nespresso Money Mule by Nina Kollars. ▶ this video In 2020, I personally reported 150+ hijacked eBay accounts used to commit $160k+ in triangulation fraud against a company I worked for at the time - eBay did very little to help. In February 2022, I collected about 80 reports from people who received 1099-Ks from eBay even though they had never knowingly created an account on the site - their PII (names, addresses, and in some cases even correct SSNs) were used to create fraudulent accounts that sold tens of thousands of dollars each with no vetting or verification of any kind by eBay. And all of that is a tiny drop in the bucket. I place a lot of the blame for where we are, and why this legislation ever came to be, squarely on the marketplaces. They've known about rampant fraud and scams for years, could have put in stricter vetting and verification procedures, invested more in highly trained human powered Trust & Safety to deal with counterfeits and fraud etc. but for the most part they have done the minimum required to cover their own "assets" and nothing more...which still left room for a lot of consumer harm to be done. While I don't think this will curb all of the fraud, like you said they will likely just jump to new accounts, having to produce actual documents to match the stolen PII may at least

in “eBay, Etsy and Other Markets Now Have to Disclose Seller Details with Inform Act” · View on HN

numpad0May 2022Cites it

ID could be faked or stolen credit cards can be used. In fact, dropshipping(ordering items on the fly, automatically, from a backend webstore - e.g. Amazon, Aliexpress, taobao) on stolen credit cards, or even pretending to do that without shipping part, is so prevalent there's a DEF CON talk[1] on that topic. 1: ▶ this video

in “Tell HN: I was permanently banned from eBay in one hour” · View on HN

Show 1 more comment
sgillenApr 2020Cites it

You may be a money mule! And you may want to report this, someone vulnerable could be racking up massive debt paying for free stuff. see : ▶ this video

in “Jeff Bezos has returned to day-to-day management of Amazon” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Privacy, surveillance & cybercrimeSecurity & hackingmoney mulestolen cardsebaynespressodef conscams