An Amazon Seller Says They Were Offered a Way to Bribe an Amazon Employee (mercurynews.com) 19
Jack Nekhala had a business selling on Amazon — and in December he received an unusual offer, reports Bloomberg. A woman said she could bribe an Amazon employee "to help him retrieve $90,000 in funds that the e-commerce giant had frozen after suspending him over an alleged violation of review policy."
Hoping to ingratiate himself with the company and restart his business, Nekhala offered to provide evidence, including recorded conversations and screen shots, that he said proved Amazon personnel were peddling inside information and influence. The smoking gun, Nekhala told the representative: information about his seller account. Only certain Amazon employees are supposed to have access to such details, but Nekhala had received them from the woman on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app. Nekhala's experience, which he documented and shared with Bloomberg, provides a rare glimpse into an international black market that has been a persistent scourge of Amazon's online store. On one side are sellers looking for a variety of favors: a competitive edge over their rivals, information on how to boost sales, a way to get themselves unsuspended. On the other are middlemen who lurk on message apps like Telegram, WeChat and WhatsApp offering access to people inside Amazon who can get things done for a price...
It's impossible to determine the scope of the illicit activity, but it's an open secret among Amazon sellers and consultants, who are frequently approached on social-media platforms and messaging apps. "The message is always the same: 'I'm going to show you screenshots to prove I have inside access,'" said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee who runs a seller consulting firm... In 2020, federal prosecutors exposed an international bribery scheme involving Amazon sellers and employees. The ring allegedly extracted about $100 million in unfair advantages by bribing Amazon employees in Asia to help them sell more products and sabotage their competitors. Five people in the US were convicted and received jail terms or probation. Last year, law enforcement officials in India began investigating more than 20 former Amazon employees suspected of accepting bribes from trucking companies in exchange for routes, according to The Times of India.
After Nekhala reported his own experience to Amazon, the representative committed to "do some digging" and to email him instructions on how his evidence could be shared, according to a recording of the conversation. But Nekhala said he never heard back. The employee who leaked his personal information had already been fired for unrelated misconduct, according to Amazon.
Amazon told Bloomberg employee involvement was "very rare," and that "We invest heavily in this area and have dedicated teams and systems in place to prevent all types of fraud, including by our own employees."
It's impossible to determine the scope of the illicit activity, but it's an open secret among Amazon sellers and consultants, who are frequently approached on social-media platforms and messaging apps. "The message is always the same: 'I'm going to show you screenshots to prove I have inside access,'" said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee who runs a seller consulting firm... In 2020, federal prosecutors exposed an international bribery scheme involving Amazon sellers and employees. The ring allegedly extracted about $100 million in unfair advantages by bribing Amazon employees in Asia to help them sell more products and sabotage their competitors. Five people in the US were convicted and received jail terms or probation. Last year, law enforcement officials in India began investigating more than 20 former Amazon employees suspected of accepting bribes from trucking companies in exchange for routes, according to The Times of India.
After Nekhala reported his own experience to Amazon, the representative committed to "do some digging" and to email him instructions on how his evidence could be shared, according to a recording of the conversation. But Nekhala said he never heard back. The employee who leaked his personal information had already been fired for unrelated misconduct, according to Amazon.
Amazon told Bloomberg employee involvement was "very rare," and that "We invest heavily in this area and have dedicated teams and systems in place to prevent all types of fraud, including by our own employees."
Amazon is corrupt! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazon is corrupt! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it may be evidence that Amazon has a shitty corporate culture that squeezes every penny it can out its employees.
Corruption can happen anywhere, but it's more likely to happen in totalitarian cultures where people feel like the system is rigged anyway. That's why countries like Russia and China have corruption problems. But I suspect the same feelings of me vs. the system occur in a capitalist enterprise like Amazon where employees are governed by dystopian, rigid, computerized metrics.
Re:Amazon is corrupt! (Score:5, Interesting)
You have no idea what you're talking about. Peru was rated 'most corrupt country in the world' and yet it's pretty much the opposite of totalitarian, the government could be better described as "chaos".
As I used to tell my ESL students, "Oh, there's plenty of corruption in the US, it's just that it happens at a higher level. Rather than passing $20 to a cop they're passing $100,000 to a politician or official so we don't see it."
Is this (corporate) exceptionalism, USA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It has been my experience, sad to say, that online stores aren't above selling consumer credit card information either, and I've grounds to think Amazon is one that does this.
Now now guys ... (Score:1, Funny)
.... don't impose your western values on the eastern folk of this worldwide company!
The ring allegedly extracted about $100 million in unfair advantages by bribing Amazon employees in Asia to help them sell more products and sabotage their competitors.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
From the summary, "Five people in the US were convicted and received jail terms or probation.", so sounds like some westerners are involved as well.
Possibly, though their names, citizenship status, etc. would be helpful to know that.
This isn't even a little surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
All of this creates a rich ecosystems that's ripe for bribery; it's an inexpensive and effective way to get things done. It's not rare: it's commonplace and unremarkable. Of course these companies will claim otherwise because they don't want to admit that they're created a culture of corruption, and every once in a while they'll throw someone under the bus so that they can claim they promptly investigate all such activities, that's all bullshit. The systems they've built are functioning as designed and intended, and as long as massive amounts of money keep flowing to corporate executives, they have no reason to disturb them.
Everyone foolish enough to put their personal/company/organization data in clouds run by these companies should consider that all of their data is quite likely available to anyone who can put $5K or $20K or whatever in a manila envelope and slide it across a table.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually that last part isn't true. I worked at AWS, and their storage is not like a Windows share where admins have god-like access. All AWS staff see is a "blob" (that's actually what they call it) of encrypted data. They can move it, back it up, or whatever, but only as a blob.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not surprised. Because this is the way business is done in some places around the world.
China (Score:1)
China.
Not all 1.57 million Amazon employees are honest? (Score:2)
Amazon has 1.57 million employees - about the same as the population of Philadelphia, PA. Philly had over 150,000 crimes last year, including 222 murders. It would be surprising if Amazon didn't have some level of crime (more than just jacking up the price of Subscribe-n-Save items).
That doesn't tell us anything about how frequent that crime is, or how frequently they get caught, or why those workers commit crimes. We don't know if those workers are doing it because they're underpaid, disgruntled, have a
@amazon #SaveStargate (Score:1)
#SaveStargate