Fraudsters pretending to be Amazon took £86,837 from UK victims in just nine days this month, according to an alert issued on Friday 30 October by Report Fraud, the national fraud and cyber crime reporting service run by the City of London Police. The service logged 110 reports of Amazon impersonation between 5 and 14 October 2026, an average loss of more than £9,600 a day.
The warning lands four weeks before Black Friday, when millions of UK shoppers will be expecting order confirmations, delivery updates and payment messages from Amazon and other retailers. That flood of genuine messages is exactly the cover these criminals rely on. This article sets out what Report Fraud found, how the calls work step by step, what Amazon says it will and will not do, and how a victim in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland can try to get money back.
In short
- 110 reports, £86,837 lost: Report Fraud recorded the Amazon impersonation cases between 5 and 14 October 2026, more than £9,600 a day on average.
- Older shoppers hit hardest: people aged 50–79 made up 60 per cent of the reports, according to the alert.
- The script: an unexpected call claims there is suspicious activity on your Amazon account, items or gift cards in your basket and a delivery address that is not yours.
- The real goal: getting you to share your screen, install remote access or money transfer apps, hand over ID documents or authorise payments to accounts the criminals control.
- What to do: hang up, check your account only through the Amazon app or website, call your bank on 159, text scam numbers to 7726 and report losses to Report Fraud on 0300 123 2040 (Police Scotland on 101 in Scotland).
What did Report Fraud announce about Amazon scam calls?
The alert, published by the City of London Police on 30 October and picked up by outlets including LADbible, Deeside.com and the UK news agency UKNIP, is based on an analysis of Report Fraud data for a single nine-day window. Between 5 and 14 October 2026 the service received 110 reports in which Amazon impersonation had been identified as part of the fraud. Combined losses over the period were £86,837.
Report Fraud said the figure works out at a daily average of more than £9,600. Divided across all 110 reports, the mean loss is roughly £790, although the alert does not say how many reports involved no loss at all, so the typical loss per victim who did pay is likely to be higher. The service did not publish a median figure or the largest single loss.
The age profile is the most striking detail. People aged between 50 and 79 accounted for 60 per cent of reports, according to the alert. That does not mean younger shoppers are immune; it suggests the phone call, rather than a text or email, is the main delivery route, and older people are more likely to answer calls from unknown numbers on a landline or mobile.
Local police networks are already pushing the message out. Deeside.com reported that the warning was sent to residents across north Wales through the North Wales Community Alert system, and similar neighbourhood alert services tend to circulate national Report Fraud warnings to their subscribers within days.
Report Fraud does not usually publish brand-by-brand loss figures on a weekly basis, so the decision to isolate a nine-day window points to a spike that analysts considered worth flagging. A short window also means the true annual cost of Amazon impersonation is far higher than £86,837. If the October pace held for a full year, losses would run to more than £3.5 million, although that is a simple extrapolation and not a figure the police have given.
Reports also capture only part of the picture. Many people who are targeted hang up without losing money and never report the call, while some victims are too embarrassed to come forward. Police forces and consumer groups have long said that fraud is under-reported in England and Wales, so the 110 cases are best read as a floor rather than a ceiling.
How does the fake Amazon call actually work?
The pattern described by Report Fraud follows a script that has been refined over several years. The criminal contacts the victim out of the blue, claims to be calling from Amazon and says there has been suspicious activity on the victim’s account. The claims are designed to create alarm and urgency in the first minute of the conversation.
According to the alert, the caller typically says that items have been added to the victim’s Amazon basket for delivery to an address that does not belong to them, and that someone is trying to buy those items with the victim’s bank details. To make the story feel genuine, the caller may read out a specific delivery address. In some cases the caller says gift cards have been added to the basket instead of physical goods.
The victim is then told the purchases can be stopped and the account secured, but only if they follow instructions straight away. This is the point at which the call turns from a story into a theft. Every instruction that follows is designed either to give the criminal control of the victim’s device or money, or to persuade the victim to move money themselves.
The four tactics Report Fraud identified
Report Fraud’s analysis set out four tactics used once the victim is on the hook. First, victims are asked to share their screen through messaging platforms, which lets the criminal watch them log in to banking apps and read one-time passcodes as they arrive. Second, they are persuaded to download money transfer apps, which can then be used to move funds out of the victim’s control.
Third, victims are talked into installing remote access software, which allows the criminal to take control of the phone or computer and carry out transactions without the victim’s knowledge. Fourth, victims are asked to send genuine identity documents such as a passport or driving licence for “verification”. Report Fraud said those documents are then used to facilitate further fraud, for example opening accounts or credit in the victim’s name.
Some victims were tricked into authorising payments directly to accounts controlled by the criminals, according to the alert. That distinction, between a payment the victim pushed themselves and one the criminal made using remote access, matters a great deal when it comes to getting money back, as the section on refunds below explains.
The “items in your basket” claim is cleverly chosen. Most regular Amazon shoppers have items sitting in a basket or a saved-for-later list, and few can remember exactly what is there. A caller who says “someone has added a laptop and two gift cards for delivery to an address in Leeds” is describing something that sounds plausible and is hard to disprove in the middle of a phone call.
Gift cards are a deliberate choice too. Once an Amazon gift card code has been read out or redeemed, the value can be spent almost instantly, and it is far harder to trace or reverse than a card payment. Retail fraud specialists have warned about this weakness for years, and our guide to gift card fraud and the controls that stop it explains why draining and cloning schemes remain so popular with organised criminals.
Who is being targeted, and why older shoppers?
The 60 per cent share for people aged 50–79 is consistent with what banks have reported about impersonation fraud more broadly. Lloyds Banking Group said in August 2026 that its customers lost an average of £3,516 to impersonation scams in the year to June 2026, up 10 per cent on the previous year. The bank also said impersonation of HMRC rose by 63 per cent and impersonation of broadband and mobile providers by 57 per cent, even though the total number of impersonation cases it saw fell by 3 per cent.
The common thread is trust in a familiar brand. Amazon is used by most UK households, so a caller claiming to be from Amazon is far less likely to be dismissed than one claiming to be from an unfamiliar company. Chief Superintendent Amanda Wolf, head of Report Fraud operations, made the same point in the alert.
“Fraudsters are increasingly successful when they can make their approach feel ordinary,” she said, according to the City of London Police statement. “A call about an account issue, a delivery problem or suspicious activity can catch any of us off guard, particularly when it appears to come from a brand we know and trust.”
Much consumer advice about Amazon scams focuses on phishing emails and fake delivery texts. This alert is different because it centres on live phone calls. A real-time conversation lets the criminal react to hesitation, answer questions, apply pressure and talk the victim through each step, which is why call-based fraud often produces larger losses than a single bogus link.
Phone scams also exploit the fact that many people still treat a voice call as more trustworthy than a text. Callers can spoof or rotate numbers, and some victims report that the number displayed looked like a UK landline. The safest rule is that the number on screen proves nothing about who is calling.
What does Amazon say it will and will not do?
An Amazon spokesperson responded to the alert with a general warning. “Scammers that attempt to impersonate Amazon put consumers at risk and there are a variety of scams that ask people to make payments by email, phone, or text for items or services,” the spokesperson said, as reported by LADbible.
“Be wary any time someone tries to convince you that you must act now; scammers may try to create a sense of urgency to persuade you to do what they’re asking, and they use convincing tactics to reel consumers in,” the spokesperson added. “We encourage consumers to report suspected scams to us so that we can protect their accounts and refer bad actors to law enforcement to help keep them safe.”
Amazon’s own UK scam guidance, published on its trustworthy shopping pages, tells customers to pause and verify any message claiming there is a problem with their account. It says service-related communication should happen on Amazon.co.uk, in the official Amazon app or through verified Amazon social media accounts, and that anyone unsure about a message should contact Amazon customer service directly. Amazon’s help pages also say the company will never ask customers to verify personal information over the phone.
The table below sets the claims made in these calls against what genuine Amazon contact looks like, based on Report Fraud’s description of the scam and Amazon’s published guidance.
| What the caller says or asks | What genuine Amazon contact looks like | What you should do |
|---|---|---|
| “There is suspicious activity on your account” | Account and order issues are visible in Your Orders and your account settings on Amazon.co.uk or the app | Hang up and log in yourself through the app or a typed web address |
| “Items or gift cards are in your basket for delivery to another address” | Orders appear in Your Orders; a basket alone is not a purchase | Check Your Orders; ignore what is in the basket |
| “Share your screen so I can help” | Amazon customer service does not need to see your banking app | Refuse and end the call |
| “Download this app to secure your account” | Security changes are made inside your Amazon account settings | Never install remote access or money transfer apps at a caller’s request |
| “Send a photo of your passport or driving licence” | Amazon says it will not ask you to verify personal information over the phone | Do not send ID; report the call |
| “Move money or authorise this payment to stop the order” | Cancelling an order never requires you to send money anywhere | Treat it as fraud; call your bank on 159 if money has moved |
Genuine Amazon messages are about to multiply
The timing of the warning is awkward for shoppers because legitimate Amazon messages are about to increase sharply. Amazon has been changing how refunds and returns work for UK customers, including a scheme that lets some shoppers keep items and still get their money back; our report on how Amazon UK lets shoppers keep returns under returnless refunds explains how that works for sellers. Changes like these give criminals fresh material, because “your refund is waiting” or “we need to confirm a return” sounds entirely believable.
The defence does not change with the message. Whatever the caller claims, the answer is to end the conversation and check the account independently. A genuine refund, return or order problem will still be there when you log in through the app.
Why does this warning matter before Black Friday?
Black Friday falls on Friday 27 November 2026, with Cyber Monday on 30 November, and early sales from several UK retailers are already running. That means the next five weeks will bring the year’s heaviest volume of order confirmations, dispatch notices, delivery slots and payment alerts. For criminals, a shopper who has genuinely placed five orders in a week is an easier target than one who has placed none.
Shoppers also tend to act faster during sales, which is precisely the behaviour Report Fraud warns against. “The best defence is to pause,” Chief Superintendent Wolf said. “Criminals want people to react quickly; we want people to take a moment, challenge what they’re being told and verify it through a trusted route.”
Fraud is not the only Black Friday risk. Regulators are also watching how retailers present their deals, and our guide to Black Friday 2026 early sales and the UK rules on fake countdown deals covers the Competition and Markets Authority’s first fines under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. The two problems are separate, but both reward the same habit: slow down, check independently and do not let a clock make the decision for you.
The wider fraud picture
The Amazon figures sit inside a much larger problem. UK Finance’s annual fraud report, published in June 2026, said criminals stole almost £1.3 billion from UK banking customers in 2025. Losses to purchase scams, where people pay for goods that never arrive, rose by around 20 per cent to £118.1 million, according to coverage of the report, while investment scam losses rose by about 40 per cent to £221.5 million.
Impersonation of trusted organisations runs through many of those categories. Bank and police impersonation rose by 18 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 compared with a year earlier, Lloyds Banking Group said in its August data. Amazon impersonation is one strand of that broader trend, and the same criminal groups often switch brands as warnings about one of them spread.
How can you check whether a call is really from Amazon?
The simplest rule is that you should never try to verify a call while you are still on it. A criminal can confirm any detail you ask about, from your name to a partial card number, because some of that information may already have been stolen in an earlier data breach. Verification only counts when you start the contact yourself.
Report Fraud’s advice is to end the conversation, find the genuine contact details yourself and make contact independently. “Whether somebody claims to be from Amazon, your bank, the police or any other organisation, don’t feel pressured into acting immediately,” Chief Superintendent Wolf said.
- Hang up. You do not need to be polite or give a reason. Ending the call is the single most effective step.
- Wait, then use a different line if you can. Some criminals keep a landline open after the victim hangs up, so waiting a few minutes or using a mobile before calling your bank is sensible.
- Open the Amazon app or type the web address. Check Your Orders, your payment methods and your saved addresses. Do not use a link sent during or after the call.
- Look for unfamiliar orders, not basket items. Something sitting in a basket has not been bought.
- Change your password if anything looks wrong. Turn on two-step verification in your Amazon account settings if it is not already on.
- Call your bank on 159. The 159 number connects to the fraud teams of most major UK banks and is run by Stop Scams UK.
- Report the call. Text the word “Call” followed by the scam caller’s number to 7726, and report the attempt to Amazon.
The alert focuses on phone calls, but the same script is used in texts and emails. Suspicious emails can be forwarded to report@phishing.gov.uk, the National Cyber Security Centre’s reporting address, and suspicious texts to 7726. Check sender addresses carefully, because lookalike domains with one letter changed are a long-standing trick, and remember that a sender name can be faked as easily as a phone number.
Brand impersonation is not limited to Amazon. In September, Tesco reported a wave of fake gambling adverts using its name to the police, as we covered in our report on Tesco’s fake casino scam ads and the police referral. The lesson from both cases is that a familiar logo, name or voice is the least reliable signal of all.
What should you do if you have already been caught out?
Speed matters more than anything else. If you have shared your screen, installed software, sent ID or made a payment, contact your bank immediately using 159 or the number on the back of your card. Banks can sometimes stop or recall a payment if they act quickly, and they can block further transactions on compromised accounts.
If you installed remote access software, disconnect the device from the internet and uninstall the app, then change passwords for your email, Amazon and banking accounts from a different, clean device. If you sent a passport or driving licence, report it as compromised and consider a protective registration with Cifas, the fraud prevention service, which flags your identity so lenders carry out extra checks.
Then report the fraud. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland that means Report Fraud online at reportfraud.police.uk or by calling 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, report it to Police Scotland on 101. Tell Amazon as well, so it can secure your account and pass details of the criminals to law enforcement, as its spokesperson said it does.
Can you get the money back?
Whether you can recover the money depends heavily on how it left your account. Since 7 October 2024, UK payment firms have been required to reimburse most victims of authorised push payment fraud, where the victim is tricked into sending money by Faster Payments or CHAPS, up to a maximum of £85,000 per claim. Firms can apply an excess of up to £100 and can refuse a claim if the victim acted with gross negligence or was complicit, but the Payment Systems Regulator has said the default should be reimbursement.
Where the criminal made the payment themselves, for example using remote access software, the payment may count as unauthorised rather than authorised. Under the Payment Services Regulations 2017, banks must generally refund unauthorised transactions promptly unless the customer acted fraudulently or with gross negligence, and customers should report them without undue delay. Banks sometimes argue about which category a payment falls into, so it is worth keeping a written record of exactly what happened and when.
| How the money left | Main protection | Key limits | First step |
|---|---|---|---|
| You sent a bank transfer (Faster Payments or CHAPS) after being tricked | Mandatory APP fraud reimbursement since 7 October 2024 | Up to £85,000 per claim; excess of up to £100; gross negligence exception | Call your bank on 159 and ask to make an APP fraud claim |
| The criminal made payments using remote access to your device | Refund of unauthorised transactions under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 | Gross negligence exception; report without undue delay | Tell your bank the payments were not made by you |
| Payments from a debit or credit card you did not approve | Card issuer fraud refund and chargeback rules | Issuer will investigate; time limits apply | Report to the card issuer immediately and cancel the card |
| You bought gift cards and read out or shared the codes | Little statutory protection once codes are redeemed | Recovery depends on the issuer freezing unspent balances | Contact the gift card issuer at once with the codes and receipts |
| Money moved through a money transfer app | Depends on the provider and payment type | Not every app is covered by the same rules as UK banks | Report to the app provider and your bank on the same day |
None of these routes is guaranteed, and the table is a general guide rather than legal advice. If a bank refuses a claim, you can complain to the bank formally and then take the case to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free to use.
What is Report Fraud, and what happened to Action Fraud?
Many shoppers will still think of Action Fraud as the place to report scams. Report Fraud replaced Action Fraud as the national reporting service for fraud and cyber crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 4 December 2025, with a full public launch in January 2026, according to the City of London Police. The phone number, 0300 123 2040, did not change, and the website is now reportfraud.police.uk.
The new service has three parts: a contact centre and online reporting tool, a national analysis system that replaced Action Fraud’s back-end, and a victim support service. The Home Office and the City of London Corporation allocated £152 million to develop and run the service over five years, according to reporting at the time of the launch. The project had been delayed, having originally been due to go live in 2024.
The Amazon alert is an early example of what the new analysis system is meant to do: spot a pattern across many reports quickly and turn it into a public warning while the scam is still active. Scotland sits outside the service, and people there should continue to report fraud to Police Scotland on 101.
Even if you did not lose money, reporting a scam call helps police link cases and identify the numbers, accounts and apps being used. The Amazon figures exist only because 110 people reported what happened to them. Each report adds to the intelligence that lets the police issue alerts like this one and, in some cases, disrupt the groups behind them.
Are fake Amazon calls part of a wider wave of retail fraud?
It is, and the run-up to Christmas tends to bring several strands together. On the same day as the Amazon alert, Trading Standards and the Intellectual Property Office published test results showing that seized fake cosmetics contained mercury, lead and methanol, as we reported in our story on fake beauty products found to contain mercury and lead in the UK. Counterfeit goods, fake shops and impersonation calls are different crimes, but they all exploit the same busy shopping season.
The common defence is to deal only with channels you have chosen yourself. Buy through retailers and marketplaces you know, check sellers before you pay, use a credit card for larger purchases where possible and treat any unexpected contact about your account as suspicious until you have checked it independently.
The table below summarises the main fraud risks UK shoppers face in the weeks before Christmas and the single most useful check for each.
| Risk | How it reaches you | Best single check |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon or retailer impersonation calls | Unexpected phone call about account activity or orders | Hang up and check Your Orders in the official app |
| Fake delivery texts and emails | Message about a missed parcel or a small redelivery fee | Track parcels only on the courier’s own site or app |
| Purchase scams | Too-good-to-be-true deals on social media or fake shops | Check the seller’s history and pay with a protected method |
| Counterfeit goods | Cheap branded products from unfamiliar sellers | Buy from authorised retailers; compare prices with the brand’s own site |
| Bank or police impersonation | Call asking you to move money to a “safe account” | No genuine bank or police officer will ask you to move money; call 159 |
What should retailers and marketplace sellers take from the alert?
The alert is aimed at shoppers, but UK retailers and marketplace sellers have a stake in it too. Impersonation scams erode trust in the brands being copied, and they increase the volume of worried customers contacting genuine customer service teams. Independent sellers on Amazon may also find customers more wary of legitimate contact about orders and returns over the coming weeks.
Retailers can help by stating clearly, on their websites and in order confirmations, what they will never ask customers to do over the phone. Plain messages such as “we will never ask you to install software, share your screen or move money” give customers a simple test to apply. Customer service teams can also make it easy for customers to call back on a published number, rather than expecting them to trust an inbound call.
For smaller sellers, the most practical step is consistency. If you contact customers only through the marketplace’s messaging system and say so in your listings and packaging inserts, any call or text that breaks that pattern becomes easier for a customer to spot as fake.
Frequently asked questions
How much has been lost to fake Amazon calls?
Report Fraud recorded 110 reports of Amazon impersonation between 5 and 14 October 2026, with combined losses of £86,837. That is more than £9,600 a day over the nine-day period, according to the alert issued on 30 October.
Does Amazon ever call customers about suspicious activity?
Amazon says customers should handle service matters through Amazon.co.uk, the official app or verified Amazon social media accounts, and that it will never ask you to verify personal information over the phone. If you receive a call, hang up and check your account yourself through the app.
Someone said items were added to my basket. Have I been hacked?
Not necessarily. Items in a basket have not been bought. Log in through the Amazon app or a typed web address and check Your Orders, your payment methods and saved addresses. If anything looks unfamiliar, change your password and turn on two-step verification.
I shared my screen with the caller. What should I do?
Contact your bank straight away on 159 or the number on your card, then disconnect the device from the internet and remove any app the caller asked you to install. Change your email, Amazon and banking passwords from a different device, and report what happened to Report Fraud or, in Scotland, Police Scotland.
Will my bank refund money I sent to the scammers?
If you were tricked into sending a bank transfer by Faster Payments or CHAPS, you may be covered by the mandatory APP fraud reimbursement rules in force since 7 October 2024, which cover up to £85,000 per claim with an excess of up to £100. Payments made by criminals using remote access may be treated as unauthorised and refunded under separate rules. Exceptions apply for gross negligence.
What if I bought gift cards for the caller?
Contact the gift card issuer immediately with the codes and your receipts, because unspent balances can sometimes be frozen. Once a code has been redeemed, recovery is much harder, which is why criminals ask for gift cards. Report the fraud to Report Fraud as well.
Is Action Fraud still the place to report scams?
No. Report Fraud replaced Action Fraud for England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 4 December 2025. You can report online at reportfraud.police.uk or by calling 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, contact Police Scotland on 101.
How do I report a scam call or text?
Text the word “Call” followed by the caller’s number to 7726 to report a scam call, forward scam texts to 7726, and forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk. You can also report impersonation attempts to Amazon so it can protect your account.
The bottom line for UK shoppers
The Report Fraud alert puts a hard number on a familiar scam: £86,837 lost in nine days to people pretending to be Amazon, with older shoppers making up most of the victims. The script relies on alarm and urgency, a believable story about your basket and a request to do something only a criminal would ever need, whether that is sharing your screen, installing an app, sending ID or moving money.
With Black Friday on 27 November and the Christmas delivery rush to follow, genuine messages from Amazon and other retailers will soon arrive in large numbers. The safest habit is also the simplest one: never act on an unexpected call, end the conversation and check your account through the app you already trust. If money has gone, call your bank on 159 and report it the same day.