Amazon Sellers Bribed Employees To Lift Bans, Bloomberg Reports
The report shows a functioning black market inside Amazon Marketplace where employees trade internal access for cash, and that Amazon's response to a documented bribery offer was to fire one employee for unrelated misconduct while failing to act on the seller's evidence.
Reporting from 1 sources: GIGAZINE.
A Bloomberg investigation reveals middlemen brokering bribes between suspended Amazon sellers and Amazon employees to restore accounts, recover frozen funds, and obtain internal data. Seller Jack Nekara documented one such approach and reported it to Amazon, which said it would investigate but never followed up.
Bloomberg has detailed a shadow industry in which middlemen approach Amazon sellers whose accounts have been suspended and offer to bribe Amazon employees to restore them. Seller Jack Nekara, who patented an adjustable rubber band called BED SCRUNCHIE and built annual sales of about $6 million on Amazon, lost his account in November 2024 after running a review-incentive campaign. A woman named Jenna, a Chinese immigrant in California, contacted him weeks later, obtained his account records from an Amazon employee acquaintance, and proposed recovering $90,000 in frozen funds by bribing that employee with 20 percent. Nekara declined, recorded the conversations, and reported the offer to Amazon. Amazon said it would investigate and send instructions for submitting evidence, but Nekara said he never heard back. The company stated the employee who leaked his data had already been fired for other misconduct. Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said the company invests heavily to prevent misconduct, including by employees.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.