Case Study: Large Global Retail Marketplace Selling Products Company achieves 90% reduction in refund fraud within one year with Cyberint

Virtual Humint Countering Fraud with Test Purchase Operation

Large Global Retail Marketplace Selling Products Company was targeted by a widespread “refund as a service” fraud scheme in which threat actors exploited the retailer’s return processes to obtain goods or monetary refunds, causing revenue loss and inventory manipulation. Cyberint was engaged to investigate the dark‑web activity and assess the scope of the threat using its threat intelligence suite and Virtual Humint services, including a targeted “refund test operation.”

Cyberint ran a three‑phase operation—pre‑engagement profiling, direct interaction with the threat actor, and a controlled test purchase following the actor’s instructions—uncovering the fraud methodology, collecting IOCs, and enabling immediate mitigations (suspicious IPs blocked, transaction authorization rules reviewed, and IOCs fed into internal systems). As a result of Cyberint’s work, the retailer identified related compromised accounts and reduced refund scam incidents by 90% over a one‑year engagement.