A Washington theft ring that allegedly sold stolen goods on Amazon.com, making at least $10 million in sales over six years, included two contracted Amazon delivery drivers, Fox News reports.
An unsealed search warrant affidavit from FBI agent Ariana Kroshinsky, which was reviewed by The Associated Press, shows that the ring had been allegedly using two fake pawn shops to buy goods from shoplifters before sending them to Amazon warehouses to be sold online. Law enforcement raided the two pawn shops and the home of the person who was identified as the group’s ringleader: Aleksandr Pavlovskiy, 44, of Auburn.
Kroshinsky said that two contract Amazon drivers would steal goods intended to be returned to Amazon’s warehouse south of Seattle and instead sell them to the pawn shops. The high number of transactions made by one of these drivers at these pawn shops drew the attention of a police detective in Auburn last summer, which led investigators to the theft ring.
Jon Reily, vice president for Publicis Sapient, a digital consultancy firm, and the former head of e-commerce user experience for Amazon Devices, told Fox News: “It’s a little bit of an arms race for Amazon to be able to take in product, put it on the web and get it to their customers in a speedy fashion and not unwittingly sell stolen stuff at the same time. Ultimately what Amazon has to do is show good faith if the government comes knocking on the door and says, ‘Look, you’re selling stolen goods.’”
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