Amazon operations manager who stole $273K worth of PC components pleads guilty to mail...

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? Douglas Wright, Jr., a 27-year-old former Amazon operations manager, recently pleaded guilty to mail fraud after sealing more than $273,000 worth of goods from the e-commerce giant. If you had “shady Amazon operations manager” on your hardware shortage bingo card, go ahead and mark your spot.

According to the Department of Justice, from June 2020 to September 2021, Wright used his position as an operations manager at Amazon’s warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, to ship merchandise including processors, hard drives and video cards to his home. He then sold the stolen merchandise to an unnamed computer wholesale company in California for profit.

The FBI worked with the US Postal Inspection Service to build their case. One has to wonder how the scheme could have gone on for 15 months before authorities took action, but perhaps they wanted to let it play out long enough to ensure they had the right person.

Of all the things to steal, why go after merchandise that is in heavy demand and likely under increased scrutiny from inventory managers? Then again, I suppose if he was putting a lot of thought into the scheme, he wouldn’t have shipped the goods directly to his home, either.

Wright’s guilty plea carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/93216-amazon-operations-manager-who-stole-273k-worth-pc.html

 

[Dimitriid]

If I had to guess, most of it was probably GPUs and CPUs that ended up in an eth farm. And if I had to guess a little bit more, I think there's going to be many such cases popping up and that's just on the US side of the distribution chain many were probably snagged along the way before they ever shipped.

 

[Irata]

Crime doesn't pay

Oh it does, you just need to be big / connected enough. But for a small guy, definitely not.

 

[Xallisto]

Crime doesn't pay?

Not sure I agree, if this guy wasn't so ****ing greedy he would probably have gotten away with it, who the hell needs 250k worth of pc components.

 

[Nintenboy01]

Yeah it's usually greed that does these guys in since they don't quit while they're ahead. Reminds me of the guy who sold $10 million worth of Xbox gift cards before he got caught

 

[brucek]

For a company allegedly obsessed with how many seconds their employees spend on bathroom breaks, can Amazon really have holes this big in their inventory tracking systems? You'd think this would be exactly the sort of scenario they'd obsess about having overlapping, multi-level, multi-point-of-view coverage of such that an individual acting alone would have no chance of getting away with it at all, let alone for 15 months.

 

[Guberian]

recently pleaded guilty to mail fraud after sealing

"sealing"

 

[Guberian]

For a company allegedly obsessed with how many seconds their employees spend on bathroom breaks, can Amazon really have holes this big in their inventory tracking systems? You'd think this would be exactly the sort of scenario they'd obsess about having overlapping, multi-level, multi-point-of-view coverage of such that an individual acting alone would have no chance of getting away with it at all, let alone for 15 months.

This guy isnt an average grunt on the warehouse floor.

 

[brucek]

This guy isnt an average grunt on the warehouse floor.

I get that, but Amazon has a lot of warehouses, and a lot of warehouse operations managers, and that's exactly the sort of title that typically gets its own section in the fraud & theft prevention plan, and yearly audits of it.

Someone did call the cops, it was probably Amazon, that leaves the question of when. Maybe they really did catch it pretty early but the authorities had some convincing reason for Amazon to let him and his operation stick around that long.

 

[mgwerner]

I get that, but Amazon has a lot of warehouses, and a lot of warehouse operations managers, and that's exactly the sort of title that typically gets its own section in the fraud & theft prevention plan, and yearly audits of it.

Someone did call the cops, it was probably Amazon, that leaves the question of when. Maybe they really did catch it pretty early but the authorities had some convincing reason for Amazon to let him and his operation stick around that long.

Replace the Warehouse Operations Managers with robots. No bathroom breaks or fraud to worry about.

 

[envirovore]

Crime indeed does pay if done correctly.

This guy is just an *****.

 

[yRaz]

who the hell needs 250k worth of pc components.

Wheres quantum physics at?

 

[captaincranky]

Wright’s guilty plea carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Since it's interstate, it's in federal jurisdiction. You have to serve 85% your sentence. There' no "2 to 5, out in 18 months", piddling around to be had.

 

[BadThad]

How Amazon didn't notice this sooner is very surprising. There were a LOT of people not getting their stuff out of his warehouse.

 

[captaincranky]

How Amazon didn't notice this sooner is very surprising. There were a LOT of people not getting their stuff out of his warehouse.

Maybe they did it like the fed would, waited til they had the whole gang in their sights, and the hell with the people who got screwed in the meantime.

 

[Arbie]

$240K - so maybe eight 3090s. Yeah, we won't hear from our dual-3090 guy on this one... Every cloud has a silver lining.

 

[Paul Dougherty]

If I had to guess, most of it was probably GPUs and CPUs that ended up in an eth farm. And if I had to guess a little bit more, I think there's going to be many such cases popping up and that's just on the US side of the distribution chain many were probably snagged along the way before they ever shipped.

I changed the names of one of my ETH rigs to "Dimitriid" in your honor.

 

[Sir Sparkles]

Sending stolen items to your home from work... How on earth did I get caught?

Crime certainly doesn't pay for morons.

 

[Dimitrios]

I bet he also got a few temp workers to help him out. I use to work at a wine/liquor warehouse. Near the holidays they hire anyone that has a heart beat and most only stay for a few days or weeks and most stuff that was stolen were from the temp workers from the *****s that run the temp agency.

Most temp agencies get a tax incentive for hiring criminals, no joke.

 

[captaincranky]

Maybe all of you VGA deprived gamers could get together and make "victim impact statements" at his sentencing hearing.

 

[Paul Dougherty]

Since it's interstate, it's in federal jurisdiction. You have to serve 85% your sentence. There' no "2 to 5, out in 18 months", piddling around to be had.

It's also calculated by adding all the maximum sentences together by journalists which is completely unrelated to the points system used by the federal district judge determining the actual sentence the guy gets. Expect 2 to 5 years, has to pay restitution to Amazon in the amount stolen that wasn't recovered.

 

[yRaz]

Maybe all of you VGA deprived gamers could get together and make "victim impact statements" at his sentencing hearing.

I can't imagine them gaming on 8-bit color. When I google it now I think I throw the algorithm off because I can't find anything on 8,16 or 32bit color. I remember the 265 colors, 16 bit settings and the 32bit "true color" settings in older operating systems.

 

[Paul Dougherty]

I was mistaken. The local US Attorney put out an *****-friendly press release.

 

[lazer]

Up to 20 years in jail? wow, like a murderer or more?