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Bad day for Amazon when it comes to the news cycle the past couple of days. First, we’ve got the story of a 22-year-old man who scammed Amazon out of $370,000 by using dirt. Then there was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos getting dragged online for an outlandish $400 million mega-yacht. And now we’ve got another story about two Amazon delivery drivers who the FBI says were part of a massive $10 million theft ring.
Recently unsealed federal court documents have revealed that a theft ring in the Seattle, Washington area operated for the past six years using two Amazon drivers, Amazon warehouses, and Amazon’s website to sell over 48,000 stolen items worth at least $10 million, according to NBC News.
Among those who provided stolen items to the pawn shops were two contract Amazon drivers, [FBI agent Ariana] Kroshinsky said. Their job was to travel to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, pick up items being returned to the company and then bring them to an Amazon warehouse south of Seattle, and to deliver items to post offices for shipping. Instead, they routinely stole the goods and sold them to the pawnshops, she wrote.
The two drivers, believed to be roommates, allegedly received tens of thousands of dollars from pawnshops owned by the suspected ringleader Aleksandr Pavlovskiy for items such as gaming systems, sporting goods, computer products, allergy medication, razors, electric toothbrushes, and tools, all in their original packaging.
Detectives staked out the pawnshops, Innovation Best in Kent and Thrift-Electro in Renton, and observed that they appeared to be paying shoplifters and drug users cash for new items from Home Depot, Lowes and Fred Meyer department stores. Unlike typical pawn shops, they didn’t make sales; instead, the products were moved to a warehouse and to Amazon “fulfillment centers,” from where they were shipped when they were sold on Amazon’s website by sellers using the handles “Bestforyouall” or “Freeshipforyou,” the affidavit said.
Undercover detectives were reportedly able to also sell new items in their original packaging to the shops, no questions asked, according to Kroshinsky.
The FBI estimates the revenue Pavlovskiy received from Amazon sales is “at least $10 million since 2013.”
So far, no charges have been officially filed in the case as the FBI says it is waiting for more records from Amazon to fully determine the scope of Pavlovskiy’s involvement in the theft ring.
In an unrelated case, one of the Amazon drivers in question, Abbas Zghair, was charged with murder after police said he shot and killed a man in March, then was arrested when he tried to cross the Canadian border using a fake ID.