How on earth did Amazon not catch this first, that it took a police officer to notice?
Every month or so, run a report correlating customer reports of missing boxes or missing items in boxes, with all fulfillment and delivery people who handle it along the chain.
If there are any strong statistical correlations which pop up, bingo -- you've probably got a thief. Tail them and catch them.
Feels like delivery theft prevention 101, and so much benefit for so little cost.
While 3 and 4 may be true currently, it's a lame excuse. Amazon is the probably the largest provider of services like that at the moment. I think it's more than terabytes of data, but even then, it should be trivial to do for them - https://aws.amazon.com/emr/ If they're ok with losing 6+ billion, then what's the cost of 5 engineers and some large instances in comparison?
So does it really boil down to - VP doesn't care enough?
> 6. Devs last ~18 months so no one is there long enough to care about solving a cost issue.
Are you saying devs set project priorities and cannot be assigned where the work needs to be done?
> 7. There is NO REVENUE in catching thieves
That directly contradicts point 2. Apparently there's a potential for preventing 6+ billion dollars of lost revenue.
From the article:
> $428,000 fencing stolen items, much of it on Amazon.
That's enough to put a dev on this problem for a year with required infra and still save some extra money - just from that single pawn shop.
Don't we always read articles about how Amazon is a rational, data-driven entity? Stuff like this makes it seem like Amazon is a normal big retail company like Walmart, and should be valued accordingly.
you know what I think is funny? if 3% loss is acceptable than why do these people even get prosecuted? deterrent so that it's not 4%? sure but there's something unsatisfying about that as justification for imprisoning someone.
before someone accuses me of being a communist hippie I have a thought experiment for you: every 5 years I do spring cleaning by taking all of the boxes drawers etc of accumulated consumer goods junk I haven't looked inside of in the past 5 year and just take them to good will. I reason that if it hasn't been important in the last 5 years it never will be and that I would waste more time (money) looking closely. now the thought experiment: suppose someone had broken into my house over the last 5 years and stolen something from one of those receptacles that was eventually thrown out. should I be upset? now note that I'm not asking if I'm legally entitled to being upset but whether it would be rational to be upset.
but let me actually put on my hippie commie beatnik hat: there is so much money sloshing around in the economy and inefficiencies that entrepreneurs exploit to become wealthy. most of it is above board but some of it isn't and whether those people get punished or not is largely a function of whether they're caught before they're super successful or not. what is the difference here? these people saw an inefficiency and took advantage of it. to put a sort of hyberbolic point on it: why is this theft but selling toxic cdos not? in both "transactions" ultimately one party profited at the expense of the counterparty.
Edit: I love the downvotes. What exactly about my comment isn't "curious" as dang loves to exhort. God forbid someone questions the most totalitarian institution the human mind has ever conceived of: the law. HN is no different from every other pointless echo chamber that double speaks about freedom but suppresses dissenting opinions.
I often get packages marked as delivered, then when I call Amazon to ask where the package is, they call the driver and then come back saying that the driver decided not to deliver the package and instead just marked it delivered.
This is considered a satisfactory resolution by Amazon. There's no shock from their representative, there's no apology. This is just a normal thing that happened. They don't really care what these delivery people are doing.
I used to get this with my local mail carriers a lot. My block was one of the last stops for them so if it got too late they would just mark it delivered and actually deliver it the next business day. The post office did not seem to care either.
From the article, it's not clear to me how the investigation began...could it have started with a tip from Amazon?
> A police detective last summer noticed that one of the drivers had dozens of pawn shop transactions, and thus began an investigation that uncovered a theft ring that sold millions of dollars' worth of stolen goods on Amazon.com in the past six years, the FBI said.
Why was a police detective looking at the driver's transactions? Would be interesting to know.
Police have access to pawn transactions and use them to investigate crimes. There's a crap ton of regulations around pawn shop transactions, they are open to the authorities.
If you note your serial number of your MacBook and your MacBook is stolen then you fill out a police report with the serial number and your MacBook then if your MacBook is sold to a pawn shop then your MacBook would be recovered.
They weren't looking at the drivers transactions. They were looking at the pawnshop transactions, and noticed the same person sold a large number of items.
I know someone who embezzled from Walmart and it took them almost a year to get caught. They likely knew within a month but wanted to make sure they got them
Implemented this on the UK’s road worthiness test system. We check for things like tests being completed in two seconds, dodgy pass rate etc. We actually had a leaderboard of the dodgiest garages when I was working on it
Did anything happen to those garages? And out of interest, where they clustered around a particular part of the country? I’d imagine London was a hotspot.
The items were sold on Amazon, not stolen from Amazon, at least in part. The article is very unclear about whether any of the items were stolen from Amazon, but it does make clear that items were stolen from brick-and-mortar stores.
6 years, 10 millions. That's ~1.67 millions per year, in a local zone only. I get it overall Amazon has a lot of stuff going on, but you do run local reports too, and those managing that local warehouse(s) should've catch that before police did. This smells they had coverage from a higher up in there as well.
Because reckless driving is a weak signal. It covers a huge spectrum of behavior. It should really be called "driving on the aggressive end of reasonable in the presence of a cop" because that describes more of the behavior it's written for than "reckless". Where I'm from it's what you get when they actually have no good reason to pull you over but did it anyway on a hunch that you look like you have drugs or something or if you're dumb enough to talk back at the cop. Sure, a few people are actually "reckless" but there are fancier charges with bigger fines that they actually get and that's what the insurance flags people on.
Why the downvotes? My experience mirrors that of the parent comment. Police in VA use reckless driving (along with several other statutes) as catch-all "I don't like the way you look, so I'm gonna pull you over and hassle you" rules.
Also in VA, anything over 80mph is automatically reckless driving, even when the posted limit is 70mph. Empty, straight interstate and 80mph? Criminal charges, a night in jail (better hope its not a Friday evening, or it becomes a weekend in jail), and expensive lawyer bills. At least residents know about the racket - anybody passing through better hope they don't look get on the wrong side of Johnny Law.
I got that charge for "shifting gears" which was "unusual behavior". I won in court, because I drive a manual. But you arent joking. It all needs more perspective.
>Both drivers worked for Amazon contractor JW Logistics, based in Frisco, Texas. It was unclear how long Zghair had worked for the company, but in 2015, he was convicted of reckless driving in Lewis County after leading police on a chase in excess of 100 mph (161 kph), running red lights, driving across multiple lanes of travel and crashing into a field.
I bet the blame here is with one of the insurance companies, rather than the JW Logistics. If the driver can get insured at the same cost as somebody without a reckless driving charge, then there is probably limited downside for the company to hire him.
well depending on your state it may never be reported properly if at all. A recent horrific crash in New Hampshire[1] that killed seven motorcyclist was caused by a driver who never should be on road but records were either not shared with other states, taken in from other states, or even left the bin they got filed in [2] simply because they just sat unprocessed.
>Amazon has several requirements for third-party sellers on its website: They must provide a business name, address, contact information, a valid credit card, and tax identity information.
You are right, haven't noticed that, cannot correct/edit the previous post anymore, just imagine that there is "near the end of the article" instead of "last".
Anyway, it seems to me very unlike a thorough "vetting" procedure for merchants that you are going to "host" on your platform, if the Author had used "a few" or "very few" instead of "several" it wouldn't have sound "strange" to me.
How did the FBI obtain access to pawnshop transactions? Because the article makes no mention of a court order, making it sound like they were on a fishing expedition.
The article mentions a search warrant, and that local police had first searched the records, which shown an anomaly, which triggered a local investigation.
From the Article:
> ...the FBI said in a search warrant affidavit unsealed last month
> A police detective last summer noticed that one of the drivers had dozens of pawn shop transactions, and thus began an investigation...
> The investigation began last summer when a police detective in Auburn, a south Seattle suburb, was perusing a record of pawn shop sales...
It's not clear why the police were looking at the transaction records, but it's possible they were investigating a theft.
“According to the search warrant affidavit, two storefront businesses posing as pawn shops bought the goods from shoplifters, then had the items shipped to Amazon warehouses, where they were stored until sold online.”
Like a few other commenters below have indicated - this is a confusing story.
The "fencing" part seems clear. Pawnshops had load of transactions from same people. Pawnshops appeared to be solely flogging new items online, via Amazon - indicating that they weren't functioning as you'd suspect - and were fencing from these amazon drivers and other shop-lifters.
What seems to entirely missing is "Where all this stuff came from?" Well the shoplifted stuff is on some books somewhere as 'shrinkage' - but the stuff that came off the back of an amazon truck??
> The two contract delivery drivers working for Amazon had a clear-cut assignment: They were supposed to bring packages from a warehouse south of Seattle to a post office for shipping, or sometimes drive to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to pick up items that were being returned to the company.
They stole that stuff. It was stuff going to customers, or returns coming back from customers.
Readit News
Every month or so, run a report correlating customer reports of missing boxes or missing items in boxes, with all fulfillment and delivery people who handle it along the chain.
If there are any strong statistical correlations which pop up, bingo -- you've probably got a thief. Tail them and catch them.
Feels like delivery theft prevention 101, and so much benefit for so little cost.
2. 3% shrink is accepted in retail, that is 6+ billion dollars they are ok with losing.
3. Data is large and hard to get at Amazon. Just getting access to a database without direct VP help is sometimes impossible
4. Compute resources to 'run a report' on terabytes of data are even harder to get.
5. Manager changes every six months
6. Devs last ~18 months so no one is there long enough to care about solving a cost issue.
7. There is NO REVENUE in catching thieves, so there is little to no exec sponsorship
8. Often management is involved in fraud or theft rings.
So does it really boil down to - VP doesn't care enough?
> 6. Devs last ~18 months so no one is there long enough to care about solving a cost issue.
Are you saying devs set project priorities and cannot be assigned where the work needs to be done?
> 7. There is NO REVENUE in catching thieves
That directly contradicts point 2. Apparently there's a potential for preventing 6+ billion dollars of lost revenue.
From the article:
> $428,000 fencing stolen items, much of it on Amazon.
That's enough to put a dev on this problem for a year with required infra and still save some extra money - just from that single pawn shop.
before someone accuses me of being a communist hippie I have a thought experiment for you: every 5 years I do spring cleaning by taking all of the boxes drawers etc of accumulated consumer goods junk I haven't looked inside of in the past 5 year and just take them to good will. I reason that if it hasn't been important in the last 5 years it never will be and that I would waste more time (money) looking closely. now the thought experiment: suppose someone had broken into my house over the last 5 years and stolen something from one of those receptacles that was eventually thrown out. should I be upset? now note that I'm not asking if I'm legally entitled to being upset but whether it would be rational to be upset.
but let me actually put on my hippie commie beatnik hat: there is so much money sloshing around in the economy and inefficiencies that entrepreneurs exploit to become wealthy. most of it is above board but some of it isn't and whether those people get punished or not is largely a function of whether they're caught before they're super successful or not. what is the difference here? these people saw an inefficiency and took advantage of it. to put a sort of hyberbolic point on it: why is this theft but selling toxic cdos not? in both "transactions" ultimately one party profited at the expense of the counterparty.
Edit: I love the downvotes. What exactly about my comment isn't "curious" as dang loves to exhort. God forbid someone questions the most totalitarian institution the human mind has ever conceived of: the law. HN is no different from every other pointless echo chamber that double speaks about freedom but suppresses dissenting opinions.
This is considered a satisfactory resolution by Amazon. There's no shock from their representative, there's no apology. This is just a normal thing that happened. They don't really care what these delivery people are doing.
> A police detective last summer noticed that one of the drivers had dozens of pawn shop transactions, and thus began an investigation that uncovered a theft ring that sold millions of dollars' worth of stolen goods on Amazon.com in the past six years, the FBI said.
Why was a police detective looking at the driver's transactions? Would be interesting to know.
Police have access to pawn transactions and use them to investigate crimes. There's a crap ton of regulations around pawn shop transactions, they are open to the authorities.
If you note your serial number of your MacBook and your MacBook is stolen then you fill out a police report with the serial number and your MacBook then if your MacBook is sold to a pawn shop then your MacBook would be recovered.
I know someone who embezzled from Walmart and it took them almost a year to get caught. They likely knew within a month but wanted to make sure they got them
b) Amazon wanted to get them prosecuted, not just fired, which has a higher evidence threshold
Also in VA, anything over 80mph is automatically reckless driving, even when the posted limit is 70mph. Empty, straight interstate and 80mph? Criminal charges, a night in jail (better hope its not a Friday evening, or it becomes a weekend in jail), and expensive lawyer bills. At least residents know about the racket - anybody passing through better hope they don't look get on the wrong side of Johnny Law.
>Both drivers worked for Amazon contractor JW Logistics, based in Frisco, Texas. It was unclear how long Zghair had worked for the company, but in 2015, he was convicted of reckless driving in Lewis County after leading police on a chase in excess of 100 mph (161 kph), running red lights, driving across multiple lanes of travel and crashing into a field.
You don't think he was capable of the same to get a driving job?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/22/735027835/pickup-truck-in-new...
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nearly-900-drivers-suspend...
>Amazon has several requirements for third-party sellers on its website: They must provide a business name, address, contact information, a valid credit card, and tax identity information.
It doesn't seem like that difficult to comply.
Anyway, it seems to me very unlike a thorough "vetting" procedure for merchants that you are going to "host" on your platform, if the Author had used "a few" or "very few" instead of "several" it wouldn't have sound "strange" to me.
From the Article:
> ...the FBI said in a search warrant affidavit unsealed last month
> A police detective last summer noticed that one of the drivers had dozens of pawn shop transactions, and thus began an investigation...
> The investigation began last summer when a police detective in Auburn, a south Seattle suburb, was perusing a record of pawn shop sales...
It's not clear why the police were looking at the transaction records, but it's possible they were investigating a theft.
The "fencing" part seems clear. Pawnshops had load of transactions from same people. Pawnshops appeared to be solely flogging new items online, via Amazon - indicating that they weren't functioning as you'd suspect - and were fencing from these amazon drivers and other shop-lifters.
What seems to entirely missing is "Where all this stuff came from?" Well the shoplifted stuff is on some books somewhere as 'shrinkage' - but the stuff that came off the back of an amazon truck??
They stole that stuff. It was stuff going to customers, or returns coming back from customers.
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