PORTAGE, MI – The fourth and final man has pleaded guilty to running an Amazon textbook rental scam.
Geoffrey Mark Talsma, 36, of Portage, pleaded guilty Feb. 25 to mail fraud and aggravated identity theft in U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan.
Paul Larson, 32, of Kalamazoo; Gregory Gleesing, 43, of Portage; and Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, 25, of Portage, pleaded guilty in January to mail fraud in the case.
Amazon lost more than $1.5 million to the scheme, according to court documents.
Related: Three Kalamazoo County men plead guilty in Amazon textbook rental fraud case
Talsma would create multiple Amazon accounts to rent textbooks and then sell the books for a profit instead of returning them, U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge said in a news release. The scheme took place between the dates of January 2016 and March 2021.
Talsma also paid people to accept stolen textbooks, so Amazon did not notice the large volumes of books being shipped to places associated with him, the release said.
From September 2016 to October 2019, Larson, Gleesing and Dhanoa said they would assist Talsma in renting textbooks from Amazon, the men said in their guilty pleas.
Talsma taught them to create multiple Amazon accounts with fake names, multiple street address and emails to avoid Amazon’s limit of 15 textbook rentals per customer, the men said in their pleas.
They would get the books at a fraction of their value and then sell them to bookstores and online to make a profit without paying the buyout price to Amazon, the pleas said.
Talsma would share the profits with the men after he sold the textbooks online and to a local bookstore in Kalamazoo, the release said.
Talsma is scheduled for sentencing June 28. Dhanoa is scheduled to be sentenced May 24, Gleesing on June 1 and Larson June 24.
More from MLive:
Pedestrian hit, killed by driver in Kalamazoo County
Traffic stop leads to West Michigan man being arrested on 39 felony charges
Kalamazoo County ready to give out the first $3M from housing tax, to build multi-family homes