The weeks around Black Friday compress a quarter's worth of commerce into days, and a quarter's worth of fraud with it. Fake storefronts appear in October, accumulate reviews through small honest sales, then vanish in December with the holiday order money. Triangulation schemes launder stolen cards through real deliveries. Marketplace payout systems become mule networks. Every fraud team knows the season; fewer are structurally ready for it.
The fake-seller lifecycle
Marketplace fraud is an onboarding failure harvested months later. The seller who disappears in December was fake in September, when a stolen identity or a synthetic one sailed through a document-photo check. By the time chargebacks and complaints spike, the payout accounts are empty and the platform owns the loss and the headlines.
Verify sellers like they matter
The prevention point is the seller's first day. WeVerify verifies the human (NFC chip + liveness), the business (live registry, UBO), the payout legitimacy (sanctions and PEP screening) and, for platforms under DAC7, the tax number, in one flow with sealed evidence. Our merchant-scam whitepaper documents the patterns; the platforms that deployed verification in autumn are the ones enjoying December.
Merchant fraud whitepaper · Business Verification · Book a demo