The Amazon Prime emblem is displayed on Amazon supply vehicles in Richmond, California, June 21, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Photographs
Division of Justice officers on Tuesday charged members or associates of an Armenian organized crime ring with stealing greater than $83 million value of cargo from Amazon by posing as authentic truck drivers and siphoning off items destined for the corporate’s warehouses.
Since not less than 2021, not less than 4 individuals linked to the crime ring carried out a scheme throughout California to steal truckloads of merchandise, starting from good TVs and GE icemakers to Sharkninja vacuums and air fryers, the DOJ alleged.
“At current, Amazon is stricken by recurring thefts of its shipments, which is usually known as ‘cargo theft,'” the criticism says.
Amazon has ramped up its efforts to trace and shut down fraudulent, misleading and unlawful actions on its sprawling on-line retailer. Eliminating stolen items is especially difficult. CNBC reported in 2023 that Amazon suspended dozens of third-party retailers it alleged had been promoting stolen items, although a lot of these sellers claimed they had been unknowingly caught within the scheme, placing their companies prone to survival.
Amazon is not the one retailer by cargo theft. Specialists instructed CNBC cargo theft-related losses are estimated at near $1 billion or extra a yr.
In its criticism, the DOJ mentioned the alleged fraudsters operated 4 transport carriers — AK Transportation, NBA Holdings, Belman Transport and Markos Transportation — that will receive contracted freight routes from Amazon Relay, an software utilized by truckers to acquire work, additionally known as masses.
Every trucker is assigned a load for pickup from a producer’s warehouse to be dropped off at an Amazon facility. As a substitute, the teams would divert from their designated routes, take a portion of the products off the vehicles and resell them or present them to associates, prosecutors allege.
In some circumstances, the “self-styled carriers” would full their deliveries at an Amazon warehouse a number of days after they had been anticipated to point out up, in line with the criticism.
DOJ officers seized the alleged fraudsters’ iPhones and located images and movies of warehouses lined with bins of crockpots, Keurig espresso machines, keratin shampoo, Weber grills and different items.
Amazon groups cooperated with DOJ officers of their investigation, together with sharing details about the stolen items, and particulars of the alleged fraudsters’ accounts on its on-line market.
Representatives from Amazon did not instantly reply to a request for remark.
DOJ officers linked the defendants to a litany of different alleged crimes, together with tried homicide, kidnapping, unlawful firearm possession and health-care fraud. A number of of the 13 defendants are anticipated to look in a Los Angeles district court docket on Tuesday and Wednesday, whereas one of many defendants appeared in a court docket in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Tuesday and was detained.
