Amazon seller Jack Nekhala, inventor of the Bed Scrunchie bedding product, shared evidence with Bloomberg of an international black market in which middlemen on apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, and Telegram sell access to Amazon employees willing to trade inside information and favors for a price.
After Amazon suspended his account over an alleged review-policy violation and froze $90,000, a woman contacted Nekhala on WeChat offering to bribe an Amazon contact to recover the funds for a cut. The woman had already obtained his confidential seller records, which only certain employees have access to.
Nekhala says he declined the offer and reported it to Amazon twice, in an attempt to get back in the company's good graces so that they'd reinstate his seller account. An Amazon representative acknowledged his reports and committed to “do some digging,” promising to e-mail him instructions on how to share his evidence with the company, but Nekhala never heard back after that.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told Bloomberg:
“As one of the world’s largest online marketplaces, there’s always the risk of bad actors attempting to exploit, defraud or otherwise scam our business. On very rare occasions, an employee can be involved in such instances. 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.”
However, he did not explain the lack of follow-up with Nekhala.
If all this sounds like déjà vu, it's because these types of internal dealings have already been exposed at Amazon on a grand scale several years ago. In 2020, federal prosecutors exposed an international bribery ring involving Amazon sellers and employees that allegedly extracted about $100k helping sellers sabotage their competitors. The investigation led to guilty pleas by five people in the U.S., including several Amazon seller consultants and a former Amazon employee, while a sixth fled abroad and remains at large.
Glasser told Bloomberg that Amazon works with law enforcement as needed if it discovers employees doing illegal shit, but declined to describe how the company combats fraudulent activity because “we don't want to share those methods with bad actors who might exploit them.”
