Amazon sent the FBI to take my family’s bank accounts

https://medium.com/@amy_riveter/the-united-states-of-amazon-the-day-amazon-sent-the-fbi-to-take-my-familys-bank-accounts-b5172b4ddda3

by mooreds • 4 years ago

699 186 4 years ago

medium.com

PragmaticPulp5• 4 years ago

What a weird story. I have limited, tangential experience with getting the FBI involved with crimes of an employee. In our case, they were not in a rush to make any moves against the person until they had an airtight case with indisputable evidence. Honestly felt strange given how obvious the crime was during the investigation.

Although in this case the seized funds were apparently returned. I have a feeling a lot of crucial details have been left out of this piece (EDIT: See links below to the investigation details. There are multiple parties involved and some of they were keenly aware that they were breaking laws that were "FBI-type stuff"). The devil’s advocate take on this outcome would be that the person cooperated with the FBI to provide evidence and/or testify against bigger fish in the case in exchange for being let off the hook. If this was the case, we’d probably see some headlines about an Amazon-related criminal charges in the coming months or years. Although in our case the released documents were full of “Company 1” and “Individual 2” anonymity, so someone (usually a journalist) would have to figure out the connection.

Or maybe this really was some big misunderstanding with disastrous consequences to the family. Impossible to know from an article from this perspective.

EDIT: There's a more in-depth review of the case here: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...

From the summary, it does appear that multiple people are involved in the case and the person in this article (Nelson) doesn't look like the key player in the alleged frauds, though he would have played a significant role in facilitating the accusations. There's definitely some shady business going on, but this guy could have been more of a pawn than active player.

One of the text messages from transcripts is notable (Note "Nelson" is the accused person in the Medium article):

“Flip me a couple buildings … and let me really line your pockets like we were discussing! ” Ramstetter wrote in a Dec. 17, 2018 message to Nelson, according to a copy of the exchange Amazon filed with the court.

The transcript in that article is also enlightening, because it's literally a conversation between two of the partners who acknowledge that what they're doing is "federal, FBI-type stuff" and express concern over it. If you ever get a message like that from someone proposing to "line your pockets" in exchange for facilitating deals with your employer, maybe don't work with that person any more.

throwaway0a5e• 4 years ago

I have limited, tangential experience with getting the FBI involved with crimes of an employee. In our case, they were not in a rush to make any moves against the person until they had an airtight case with indisputable evidence. Honestly felt strange given how obvious the crime was during the investigation.

Sometimes you get the A team. Sometimes you get the geniuses that loaned APCs to the ATF.

So long as the incompetence of the second rate people continues to not effect the careers of the first rate people nothing will change.

everforward2• 4 years ago

The devil’s advocate take on this outcome would be that the person cooperated with the FBI to provide evidence and/or testify against bigger fish in the case in exchange for being let off the hook. If this was the case, we’d probably see some headlines about an Amazon-related criminal charges in the coming months or years. Although in our case the released documents were full of “Company 1” and “Individual 2” anonymity, so someone (usually a journalist) would have to figure out the connection.

I find even that devil's take to be problematic, because that sounds a lot like coerced testimony. It calls into question both the morality of doing so, and the authenticity of any testimony produced.

It almost begs for comparisons to the mafia. There's not a huge gap between "testify against this person or we'll seize your home and business" and "don't testify against this person or we'll burn your home and business down". Other than that the government makes the rules, and they've decided it's okay when they do it.

drran• 4 years ago

... 1) «testify against this person, which did the crime, or state may found you guilty and seize your home and business» and 2) «don't testify against this person, which did the crime, or we will do a crime against you».

Unless you or/and accuser are criminals, the gap is huge. :-/

bmarquez• 4 years ago

The Bloomberg story linked from the article is probably more impartial and offers a bit more perspective.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-03-15/the-st...

In a nutshell, the Amazon employee in the article was accused of taking kickbacks for commercial real estate transactions, Amazon filed a lawsuit and the FBI raided the house and froze assets. And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed and none of the real estate transactions were renegotiated or broken.

phil21• 4 years ago

If the FBI is to the point of executing warrants, it's simply standard operating procedure to freeze all known assets.

I've had it bluntly explained to me by a federal prosecutor that they do it specifically so you cannot mount a legal defense due to your inability to hire a quality attorney.

The presence of frozen assets simply means federal law enforcement was engaging in an enforcement action, not anything exceptional due to the facts of the case.

ozten• 4 years ago

Also that article links to two GeekWire articles:

https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...

https://www.geekwire.com/2021/riveter-ceo-husband-dispute-fb...

ABCLAW3• 4 years ago

And over a year later, no criminal case has been filed

Just so people know, this is a blip of time in the legal world; financial fraud takes time to document. People need to go in, recover all of the relevant ESI, categorize it, then process it. Interviews with relevant stakeholders need to be undertaken - some of them who will have tight schedules, or be abroad, etc. I've been involved in fraud cases that take half a decade to hit the courts, then another decade to get through them.

As long as there's no statute of limitations style deadlines about to lapse and there's no risk that the assets being recovered are being wasted, there's little harm in spending pre-claim time on due diligence work prior to triggering court filing timelines.

alphabetting• 4 years ago

Your theory seems plausible but would a family really go publicly nuclear on FBI in this fashion if they cooperated with them to get off?

Workaccount2• 4 years ago

IIRC the FBI has something crazy like a 98% conviction rate. I'd guess that they take pride in the figure, and go to great lengths to keep it that high.

voxic11• 4 years ago

This is because the rate is calculated by excluding charges that were dropped by prosecutors, they only count dismissals and not guilty verdicts as losses.

mandevil• 4 years ago

https://archive.is/uh9K4 is a Seattle area account of this.

Most of the money is being returned, no criminal charges are being filed against either a Nelson or Kirschner. ("The investigation hasn't led to criminal charges, according to court documents.") So it doesn't sound like there is anyone to testify against.

The civil suits between Amazon and the Nelsons and the Kirschner's continue, but the fact that Amazon is currently paying all of the leases in question (for DCs used by AWS) and there will be no criminal charges does sound like Amazon didn't get ripped off too badly, if at all, which means there will probably be a settlement with undisclosed terms and lawyers on both sides claiming to be very happy and moving on.

your_username2• 4 years ago

The FBI is all kind of hanky. This just affirms my experience.

In my experience, they don't do their due diligence of a victim's reporting: they take what they say at face value if it's a corporation. Multi-million dollar loss? Couldn't have possibly been calculated in bad faith.

It was.

PragmaticPulp5• 4 years ago

Couldn't have possibly been calculated in bad faith.
It was.

Lying to the FBI is a serious crime. There’s no way the corporate counsel from Amazon would just allow some “bad faith” calculations to be used to give a false story to the FBI.

Generally, these criminal cases involve multiple employees at the company. The story doesn’t say who else was arrested as part of the investigation or what their outcome was. The FBI can prefer to target the people at the center of a crime.

brians• 4 years ago

It has happened. Repeatedly. Sometimes at the FBI’s instigation: look at the E911 memo stuff, where FBI pushed AT&T to count the cash value of any computer accessed as damage!

dionian• 4 years ago

Funny thing is, the FBI lying to you is not only legal, it's par for the course.

Jaepa• 4 years ago

You don't have to lie for a bad faith argument.

Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was order to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.

The above is part of the original police report of George Floyd's death. I would say it was made in bad faith, but there is little there that is an outright lie.

your_username2• 4 years ago

The case I'm referring to didn't involve Amazon.

Clubber• 4 years ago

There's a lot of videos on police encounters where this very thing happens. Not only that, it's amazing how many times the callers embellish what happened to make their case stronger. At least in these videos, the police don't bother to do any type of investigation. I can see how easy it is to weaponize police.

The government isn't some omniscient, omnipotent entity. It's made of people with all the flaws of regular people. The only difference is they have legal ass coverage in the form of qualified immunity, they investigate themselves, they know the system and how to hide their mistakes, and they protect their own. We should consider putting the beast on a diet.

zapataband13• 4 years ago

Cops serve property owners first and foremost.

metalliqaz5• 4 years ago

Hah, I invite you to say the same after you've tried to get them to do anything about a residential break-in or vandalism.

Like everything else they orbit centers of power and serve those structures. There has to be real wealth involved to get 'service'

melony• 4 years ago

I never understood the obsession with sending heavily armed police to break down doors for some trivial white collar crime. If there is no immediate threat to life, it can wait. You would think that with all the financial and digital surveillance, the government would be able to do better than physical search, asset robbery, and intimidation. I pay my taxes so the cavalry would come during a violent crime like robbery and kidnapping or physical damage/larceny of personal property. It seems that police are useless when it comes to the urgent crimes and instead waste their time pursuing cases better left to a non-armed government division.

hemloc_io• 4 years ago

IIRC the official line is that it's to prevent destruction of evidence.

Personally doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me. (I'm suspicious it's partly to help their case by intimidating suspects, give a reason for keeping TAC units budgets high, and b/c the TAC guys think it's fun lol)

Especially considering that if you knock down doors in the USA you're bound to get people who shoot back.

bell-cot• 4 years ago

Perhaps those engaged in (or responsible for) such behaviors are more motivated by their own emotional gratification - vs. the competence, efficiency, etc. considerations which are important to you?

rkk3• 4 years ago

Very few cases where you actually need or want a heavily armed police force to break down doors. Probably shouldn't have a system like this if we wouldn't want it applied to ourselves...

Reminds me of an old Chappelle's show skit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOVbeh2yr0&ab_channel=Comed...

sobkas• 4 years ago

I never understood the obsession with sending heavily armed police to break down doors for some trivial white collar crime. If there is no immediate threat to life, it can wait. You would think that with all the financial and digital surveillance, the government would be able to do better than physical search, asset robbery, and intimidation. I pay my taxes so the cavalry would come during a violent crime like robbery and kidnapping or physical damage/larceny of personal property. It seems that police are useless when it comes to the urgent crimes and instead waste their time pursuing cases better left to a non-armed government division.

That because we live under capitalism first and democracy second. So when capitalist ask government to jump, they ask how high.

whatshisface• 4 years ago

If we really lived under capitalism, the government would send them the bill afterwards and thank them for choosing SWAT™. There's a name for a system where the state and corporations work towards a unified interest that's aligned with the power of both, but it's not capitalism... it's fascism.

oh_sigh3• 4 years ago

What door did they break down? The article mentions that FBI agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had a warrant when she opened it.

playeren• 4 years ago

Terrible story. Civil forfeiture seems utterly incompatible with any notion of a just society. It's like democracy just gave up and regressed to feudalism.

Even _if_ the author had turned out to be 100% guilty of whatever Amazon accused them of - this form of civil forfeiture is still punishment without trial and not in line with the sixth amendment.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

msarrel• 4 years ago

I was about to comment exactly what you commented, thank you.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

Civil forfeiture is so ingrained into our "justice" system, that some jurisdictions even budget for it.

It's really, really easy for the government to justify it. All they need to do, is run out the one case in a hundred, where some death-dealing Walter White is stopped.

metalliqaz5• 4 years ago

Is there even one?

pyuser583• 4 years ago

The “one case in a hundred” is when a ship is facing fees it can’t pay so the cargo is seized.

This belongs in maritime law, and nowhere else.

Qub3d2• 4 years ago

Seriously. I believe victims of civil forfeiture should be given their money back + an amount equal to, say, the average stock market returns over the period it was gone (or at least a base 4-5%) as reimbursement of the opportunity cost and as a deterrence against frivolous seizure.

bufbupa• 4 years ago

That seems way too low. If you rob a bank and give the money back later with 4% interest, you still go to jail. This should just not be legal. Or make it 100%/mo interest or something stupendous to discourage it in all but the most extreme cases.

kingcharles6• 4 years ago

Civil forfeiture is horrible. I've spent hundreds of hours in the forfeiture court.

I remember one time the prosecutor was trying to forfeit a man's brand new $60,000 SUV because the man's son had borrowed the car and driven drunk. Luckily it was a cool judge (the rarest of the rare!) and she beat the prosecutors down "Did this man know his son borrowed the car? No." "Does this man have valid license and insurance? Yes? Give him his car back. And you know what, give him all his fines and fees and his towing fee back too. What do you mean you don't know how to give him his towing fee back? FIND OUT."

The same judge.. on her first day on the bench in the forfeiture court.. I was there early and she brought the two forfeiture prosecutors up to the bench and whispered to them "Look, you two win 95% of the cases in this court simply because no-one can even figure out how to file the paperwork to get their case into court. I won't stand for that. That isn't happening in my court room. That's all."

Which is true. In Illinois at least, if your assets get seized, you just get a letter saying you have 45 days to file all the required paperwork to even get your case into court to START defending yourself. And it says specifically on the paperwork that the State will not help you with any aspect of this filing, nor will they provide any of the required forms.

Most forfeiture cases are very, very badly prosecuted because they so rarely get challenged. If you ever have your assets seized, fight it. Most of the time you'll easily win, or the prosecutor will give up.

The BIGGEST thing by far is that the prosecutor will do a plea negotiation with you on your assets!! I proxy negotiated for people all the time. To avoid trial (no party wants this) the prosecutor will come and tell you "We'll give you 50% of your money back today if you sign away the rest". I promise you, you can get this to 80% of your money back.

You can also use frozen assets as bargaining chips in a criminal case. With the drug dealer I mentioned earlier, he had $150,000 taken from one account. For the final deal on his prison time I got his lawyer to negotiate them giving him back $80,000 of the drug money! I could have got his cars back too, but the feds had them and he didn't want to poke that bear.

p.s. if you have a new car with a loan and you've not made many payments, let the prosecutor know - they usually don't want your car as it'll become a paperwork nightmare.

p.p.s. if you have your assets seized, check the jurisdiction. In these cases the asset is considered a guilty party to the crime and must be prosecuted in the correct jurisdiction (court), which might be different to where the crime happened or where the assets were seized.

TMWNN• 4 years ago

I promise you, you can get this to 80% of your money back.

That may have happened in this case, where the couple agreed to a deal in which the state kept 1/6 of the funds.

vkou2• 4 years ago

I'm not sure this is a big a win for justice as you think it is.

If he gave the car with permission, he has a big problem.

If the son drove it without permission, it sounds like the son ought to get both a DUI and an auto theft charge.

There's been a serious problem in BC, where kids afflicted by affluenza race their parents' cars on public roadways. Luxury cars doing 50, 70 kmh over the speed limit. If I did that in my car, it would be seized from me. If these cars' legal owner doesn't want their cars seized for this sort of stuff, they shouldn't be giving the kids the keys.

rasengan• 4 years ago

Things like this and yet HN continues to be anti-cryptocurrency. Does anyone understand why?

PragmaticPulp5• 4 years ago

Cryptocurrency doesn’t free you from the law.

If he had kept the money in cryptocurrency then they’d just imprison him until it was turned over.

csee• 4 years ago

That's true, but at the same time let's not downplay the ways that self-custodial crypto may be a bulwark against authoritarian governments. I am not labelling Canada an authoritarian government by any means, but widespread self-custodial crypto would have made their response (freezing bank accounts) far harder to pull off.

rosndo3• 4 years ago

But if you used Monero, they’d have a harder time proving what funds you may have access to.

LightHugger• 4 years ago

Cryptocurrency will not save you from a trillion dollar company sending the fbi to bust down the door and steal everything you have. they will compel you to hand over any reported crypto holdings and throw you in prison if you refuse.

gruez4• 4 years ago

they will compel you to hand over any reported crypto holdings and throw you in prison if you refuse.

Has this been tested in court? If your crypto is stored in a brainwallet, you can invoke fifth amendment rights to prevent that from being divulged.

tmarice• 4 years ago

Hand over what? I lost it all in a boating accident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN_P39xI1ss

jrockway• 4 years ago

How does cryptocurrency prevent the FBI from breaking down your door over allegations of 'depriving the company of [your] “honest services”'?

gruez4• 4 years ago

How does cryptocurrency prevent the FBI from breaking down your door

The article is literally titled "The Day Amazon Sent the FBI to Take My Family’s Bank Accounts" (emphasis mine). I'd imagine the FBI would have a much harder time to seize someone's crypto wallet than freezing their bank accounts.

AlexCoventry• 4 years ago

It gives you some recourse in this scenario from the fine article:

After they knew we had no money to pay for legal representation [due to the asset seizure], Amazon’s lawyers sued my husband in federal court. If we can’t afford to defend ourselves, Amazon automatically wins.

cde-v• 4 years ago

It's ok, we should just peacefully protest this and they will change their ways.

zapataband13• 4 years ago

There are effective non-violent tools that can be used against tyranny https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pd...

but I agree in general empire/oligarchy/ruling class won't relinquish control out of feeling bad.

cjbgkagh4• 4 years ago

People are cheering at Canada forfeiting bank accounts. When such policies are normalized we can expect much more of this. This needs to be stopped, both here and in Canada for everyone’s sake.

sudosysgen3• 4 years ago

No bank accounts are being forfeited in Canada. They are being frozen, which is still bad, but it's not anywhere near as bad as forfeiting.

cjbgkagh4• 4 years ago

It denies the ability to afford a defense against anything else you may be accused of. These people got their money back yet were left immensely damaged by the process.

fundad• 4 years ago

It's already normalized to the tune of billions to people without startups.

_jal• 4 years ago

Whatever else you may think about the relative merits of forfeiture[1], white-collar crime or disruptive occupations, it is not difficult to distinguish a disruptive occupation from white-collar crime. Also, my understanding is the Canadians are freezing funds, not confiscating.

[1] For the record, I very against

klyrs3• 4 years ago

The only "cheering" I've seen about that is a sense of just desserts. Authoritarians in the US and Canada have been banging the "law and order" drum for decades. Those authoritarians largely call themselves, or at least primarily vote, Conservative or Republican. That the same legislative weapons are being turned against the very people who have asked for them gives me hope that we're going to see some bipartisan action against these blatant human rights violations.

theossuary• 4 years ago

And it's a bit hollow. Watching Canadian police break up protests and then start hugging protestors [1] afterwards shows how they use kid gloves in this situation. A far cry from how they've treated pipeline protestors and the like. They're purposefully failing to manage this protest, and simultaneously using it as an excuse to demand more power. I think it's pretty obvious the next left-wing protest in Canada is going to be much worse.

I haven't seen any left leaning groups cheering this on; but there's too much irony to ignore. Akin to watching Capital rioters worry about getting prosecuted under the rules Trump and the DOJ put in place to harshly prosecute BLM protestors.

Here's a podcast covering the actual common sentiment of the left [3].

[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/police-hug-protesters-a...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/state-courts-violent-crime-arson-...

[3] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-307...

Permit• 4 years ago

People are cheering at Canada forfeiting bank accounts. When such policies are normalized we can expect much more of this.

Completely untrue. Civil forfeiture is a uniquely American experience. The Emergencies Act will not lead to broad civil forfeiture in Canada. That is, the Prime Minister of Canada freezing bank accounts will not grant Canadian police officers the ability to seize your assets indefinitely without trial.

It is rhetorically convenient to try to link freezing a bank account to civil forfeiture, but they are not the same thing.

kodah4• 4 years ago

Civil Forfeiture money can be returned. It usually goes into some kind of escrow system. It is very much like freezing a bank account in outcome because it denies the accused the financial ability to defend themselves or to defend themselves at their own detriment.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...

While I focused on the outcome above, I think both violate the "presumption of innocence" attitude that our legal system is supposed to be built around.

Edit

I don't watch the news, so I didn't know what's happening in Canada. Here's some links:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-protests-frozen-bank...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385

This is fairly wild on every level.

ttul• 4 years ago

I'm cool with it, so long as there are horrible penalties for abuse and solid checks and balances in the courts, reasonable time limits, etc.

The US civil forfeiture system seems rife with abuse. It's not nearly as bad in Canada.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

It is not forfeiture. It is actually worse. It is using the system in ways that AML/BSA people in US warned the Patriot Act would inevitably evolve into. The only surprise is it happened in Canada first.

The system is in place to muzzle anyone and everyone that would dream of thinking of getting out of line.

AlexandrB4• 4 years ago

I thought civil asset forfeiture was limited to drug crimes. What the hell is "depriving the company of his “honest services” during his seven years of employment"? This sounds like they're accusing him of slacking off too much. Is this even a felony? Why is civil asset forfeiture being applied to what seems like a civil matter that should be resolved via lawsuits?

s1artibartfast• 4 years ago

https://www.geekwire.com/2022/former-seattle-entrepreneur-an...

The government’s seizure of the funds in 2020 was related to an FBI investigation into Carleton Nelson’s role in arranging Amazon real estate transactions. The investigation has not resulted in any criminal charges against him. In an ongoing civil suit, Amazon alleges that Carleton Nelson and a colleague conspired to receive millions of dollars in kickbacks in exchange for directing Amazon Web Services data center deals to a Colorado real estate developer. Carleton Nelson denies the allegations.
In a joint motion filed in federal court in Virginia, the Nelsons agreed to forfeit almost $109,000, while the government agreed to return the remaining $525,000 in seized funds.

efitz• 4 years ago

“Would you like no money until we change our minds or you find a way to hire a lawyer (with no money to do so) and maybe win against us in court in a few years and after having used up most of the potential proceeds in attorney’s fees, OR just sign here and we’ll skim 20% and call it even”.

Protection racket.

jcranberry3• 4 years ago

The bloomberg article says their assets were frozen rather than than forfeited (although I don't know whether there's a difference), and it was over kickbacks/fraudulent real estate contracts or something like that.

kingcharles6• 4 years ago

Civil "in rem" forfeiture says that the asset is a guilty party to the crime. It applies to any asset that is involved in any crime.

I see it often in cars taken and sold from people with traffic violations.

geekbird• 4 years ago

That's the problem. Assets can't commit a crime. They aren't people, or even corporations. Yes, maybe a court will determine after conviction that $XX is ill-gotten gains and require the convicted defendant to turn over that money. But stealing before a conviction just on a whim? This has got to stop.

tanseydavid• 4 years ago

Civil-asset forfeiture is medieval-level governance clearly designed from the outset to skirt checks-and-balances that are supposed to exist in our legal system.

There are no words too strong or negative for this. It is sick-minded and dangerous.

gandalfian• 4 years ago

She has no idea why? Yet on twitter she says her husband managed real estate deals for Amazon who accuse him of inflating their data center lease deals for kickbacks?

Google says they settled in federal court forfieting 100,000 dollars with no admission of guilt and getting the rest of their money back. A civil suit is ongoing.

wussboy• 4 years ago

She was not provided with any evidence for the accusation. I believe her "I have no idea why" is related to that.

For example, I can accuse you of murder without any evidence. You know what I did, but you do not know why I did it. I think what she's trying to say.

Of course, "I have no idea why" makes a better headline...

softwarebeware• 4 years ago

This is why I support the ACLU. They are one of the only organizations set up to actually achieve asset forfeiture reform. But they need all of our help. Check out https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po... to learn more about their efforts.

metalliqaz5• 4 years ago

The ACLU is a shadow of their former selves today. Could they hope to achieve something like this now?

function_seven• 4 years ago

For those of you who may have issues with the ACLU, also check out Institute for Justice: https://ij.org/

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

The underlying case looks to be a pretty straight developing country "referral fees" / kickback type case.

One issue is how long these cases take to resolve. This was a whistleblower blowing the whistle.

Basic deal was Watson (who ran Northstar) a property developer signed a deal to kick back referral fees to an entity that did literally no work (Villanova Trust) created by a brother of the two amazon employees (Nelson and Kirschner) who were the transaction managers for 9 data center lease deals. The kickback deal was signed after these two Amazon employees met with Watson (the Vendor).

Amazon then did $400M in deals with Watson, who then kicked back $5M to the trust in "commissions". Then amazon discovered deleted files indicating the employees were entitled to "shares" in these projects from Watson of something like an additional $16M.

Others in the mix at developer also did some kind of land flip thing. One example was property that they bought for $20M, then sold to Amazon for $116M. In one case there was something like a $20M increase in price on property that was sold to Amazon the day that it was bought?! So they were frontrunning things. Watson was pissed, and wanted a cut, so recorded a meeting with the folks doing the flip scam. But that backfired because the folks doing the flip scam knew about the leasing scam and said, hey, if you don't back off we'll blow lid on your lease scam - claiming "that's FBI". They did end up compromising on kicking back $5M to Watson from the flip scam.

Anyways, all allegations, and thousands of pages so I've no doubt got some parts wrong, but it makes for interesting reading!

My question - it seems to take a long time to get these white color criminal types into jail.

In the linked post, there is a lot of complaining that the FBI messed up the guys career, but man, this court case - why would you hire a guy like this into a position of trust?

Note these allegations are contested. “My only hope in defending myself against its false allegations is that the process will be fair and impartial.” Mr. Nelson said per a WSJ article.

mooreds• 4 years ago

Do you have a public link for the case?

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

Maybe try this:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17338366/amazoncom-inc-...

and this:

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201743.U.pdf

With 500 filings you really see how justice is different for white collar folks!

PragmaticPulp5• 4 years ago

The Geekwire articles on the investigation are interesting: https://www.geekwire.com/2021/former-aws-real-estate-manager...

They have a transcript of a recorded conversation between two parties to the alleged fraud (not including the person in the linked Medium article) who are communicating their concern that this what they're doing is "federal, FBI-type stuff", so they seem to be well aware that they were doing something wrong.

It's baffling that they not only would have recorded this conversation, but then kept it around for the FBI to find and enter into record. Unless, of course, the person who recorded it did so intentionally and offered it to the FBI in exchange for something.

Crime is strange.

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

The guy recording was mad because two folks were doing a land flip scam and front-running him and hadn't cut him in.

But they turned out to know about the lease scam that he had going with these two amazon employees. So basically he was trying to catch them out on their flip scam and was trying to record for that.

Full disclosure, Nelson and his wife are apparently claiming al the allegations are false? So it's all allegations despite the insane paper trail.

jcranberry3• 4 years ago

Very unfortunate that the wife's career got screwed then by her husbands alleged fraud.

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

It's a bit confusing because she seems to be claiming that his career has been "unfairly" hurt by this case.

Not sure what to say to that really - would you hire folks scamming like this?

buscoquadnary• 4 years ago

He may be guilty as hell but the fact of the matter is that doesn't mean the FBI can just take his stuff, it doesn't matter how guilty you look until you are convicted you are innocent, and the fact that it has been 20 months and there still haven't been any charges brought is ridiculous. Their money was taken before they were convicted and now they are not receiving a speedy and fair trial.

It is unconstitutional and wrong, it also sets a precedent, how long before the FBI finds out someone politically unpopular is being "investigated" another nice thing is that once they take your money good luck affording lawyers fees. Ultimately I was watching a trial steam once and there was a defence lawyer stated that the purpose of a defense lawyer isn't to make sure their client gets off it is too make sure their clients rights are protected and the state plays by the rules. I don't care how guilty someone is they are innocent until proven otherwise.

babyshake• 4 years ago

Civil rights and civil liberties must be fought for, repeatedly. Those in power will only do what is constitutionally required of them when they are forced to do so.

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

I'm not in favor of civil asset forfeiture.

That said, hard to believe they have no idea WHY it was seized.

And in white collar crimes, the case lengths are unnecessarily long and the money is often hard to recover. They should work on both those issues longer term.

After Amazon wins it's lawsuits these folks will be filing various bankruptcy claims and the money will have been distributed all over the place (some to lawyers, some not) over the 5-10 years it takes to fight these out.

8note• 4 years ago

Nowadays money can be accused of a crime, and isn't innocent until proven guilty

ActorNightly• 4 years ago

The differentiating case in this matter seems to be this.

The story begins around 2017. Amazon Web Services was opening new data centers in Northern Virginia at a rapid clip to handle the growing needs of its customers, including the *Central Intelligence Agency* and other branches of the U.S. government.

Having had a TS and dealing with government, my intuition is that there is something more involved here concerning the 3 letter agencies. Generally, things like this are usually settled as a lawsuit.

stjohnswarts4• 4 years ago

I agree, until they have proof, they shouldn't be allowed to "freeze" things more than a month or two and certainly not prevent people from getting enough to pay for a decent lawyer. CAF is a joke and should require a conviction. Texas is a big abuser of it as well. The law (who are the only ones who have the legal permission to do violence to you, essentially legal abusers) finds loopholes like this and really latches on. Their primary directive is to follow the constitution, they all take an oath but evidently don't care about that oath or keep it in mind when doing this stuff.

ac29• 4 years ago

He may be guilty as hell but the fact of the matter is that doesn't mean the FBI can just take his stuff, it doesn't matter how guilty you look until you are convicted you are innocent, and the fact that it has been 20 months and there still haven't been any charges brought is ridiculous. Their money was taken before they were convicted and now they are not receiving a speedy and fair trial.

I'm against civil forfeiture, but the problem here is easy to see. If you come at someone and say "we think you got $large_amount via illegal means, but go ahead and do whatever you want with it until the court proceedings are finished", the money is going to be spent or stashed in nearly every case where the person is guilty. It would make it difficult to ever recover money for the victims of crime.

Not sure how to solve that dilemma.

lenkite• 4 years ago

I fail to understand how such a thing like civil asset forfeiture can even exist in a 'wah-wah-freedom' country like the USA. You are presumed guilty if the state wills it, your assets seized and good luck finding money to hire an attorney to contest the charges.

If this was 1775, Americans would be launching a revolutionary war against such tyranny. Citizens have gotten real soft these days.

Goety• 4 years ago

It is unconstitutional and wrong, it also sets a precedent, how long before the FBI finds out someone politically unpopular is being "investigated" another nice thing is that once they take your money good luck affording lawyers fees.

I absolutely agree

sbuttgereit• 4 years ago

The unfortunate part, assuming the allegations are shown to be true in any meaningful capacity, is that those that support civil forfeiture might say, "see, this is a case of the forfeiture system working as its suppose to work... depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains."

Of course, the real argument they're trying to avoid having to make with the forfeiture "hack" is: due process of law is not required for just legal outcomes and may be an impediment to a just legal outcome. Of course that line of thought, and the successful practice of civil forfeiture to such an aim, requires a purity of virtue, morality, and rationality of law enforcement officers and prosecutors that no thoughtful observer would think it achievable. That's the whole reason due process of law and the rights of accused exist: you simply cannot trust any one person or group to find a just outcome on their own... and even then our due process is often not enough to accomplish real justice.

briffle• 4 years ago

That is kind of the basic ugly fact of the US system. If you want rights, you need to support others that you don't like having those same rights.

There have been several times where they ACLU has stepped in on behalf of the KKK to garuntee their rights to protest/rally. Its ugly, but taking the rights away from one group because you disagree with them is a very slippery slope.

kodah4• 4 years ago

The unfortunate part, assuming the allegations are shown to be true in any meaningful capacity, is that those that support civil forfeiture might say, "see, this is a case of the forfeiture system working as its suppose to work... depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains."

Bernie Madoff is their shining example of this, and routinely paraded by the authorities.

strathmeyer• 4 years ago

When you get pulled over by a cop and the cop pulls the cash out of your wallet and says "you know I can keep this, right?", that's what we're talking about, not whatever you are droning on about.

StanislavPetrov2• 4 years ago

Even if all this were true, there should have to be a trial first to prove this in a court of law before assets are seized.

tomohawk2• 4 years ago

This is a synopsis of allegations.

Made by an extremely large and powerful corporation with (apparently) connections in the FBI.

Unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there's no point at all to be made.

Stating this all as fact until proven is irresponsible.

tempnow9877• 4 years ago

Stating this all as fact until proven is irresponsible.

"Anyways, all allegations, and thousands of pages so I've no doubt got some parts wrong, but it makes for interesting reading!" - from my note.

This is reddit type response, where you assert something in my post that is simply not there. Kind of shameful really.

bllc• 4 years ago

I can't even with all the whinging about forfeiture. I read back through the Geekwire coverage and filings after reading the original article. The victim narrative by the defendants in this case has been pretty selective with the facts.

Here are the facts from the filings: the Nelsons got caught laundering more than $2M of the $11M in kickbacks they took. This $2M works its way through accounts and entities controlled by Nelson and Kirschner's lawyers, Kirschner's brother, and Amy Sterner Nelson's father. It then moves into and out of 8 bank accounts owned by the Nelsons, as well as two other smaller accounts owned by the Kirschers and Johnny Lim (who looks like just a conduit to launder $1MM to the Nelsons and Kirschners).

The US government seizes $658K from 9 accounts, each of which received funds laundered through the Nelson scheme. Only one of the accounts had a seized balance that was greater than the amount of kickback money laundered into it (Nelson Citi #7373, $25K seized versus $12K of kickbacks transferred).

Overall, $2.3M of kickback money was transfered into the accounts the government seized. Given the government seized $658K, the Nelsons were able to spend or move elsewhere nearly $1.7M of the kickback money.

From other posts, Amy Sterner Nelson's story was that there was no money. There was money, and the government has the receipts. There was at least $2M of kickback money transfered into their accounts, and $1.7M of that wasn't seized. Almost all of that $2M moves through a company controlled by James Sterner, Amy Sterner Nelson's father. I think I'm most baffled why you would move money around like this and not expect to get caught. I wonder what this all looks like through the IRS lens.

It's never hard to follow the money, but it does take a little time:

https://whimsical.com/followed-the-money-XKYwPPD6AhhGiPeePDi...

kodah4• 4 years ago

What's not covered here is the price of false accusations. If you choose to pursue charges that dole increasingly high extra-legal or legal penalties before a trials conclusion (smearing the careers of both of those individuals, seizure of capital, ruining financial history) then the accuser should be liable for damages when they pull out or lose. Doing these things is a conscious effort, as she notes. The Amazon Lawyers knew they were penniless and seized on that. That behavior should not come without consequences.

metalliqaz5• 4 years ago

"former FBI and Dept. of Justice employees who now work for Amazon leveraged cozy relationships with their former federal offices to lobby the government to pursue criminal charges and a civil forfeiture case. After they knew we had no money to pay for legal representation, Amazon’s lawyers sued my husband in federal court."

"For nearly two years, we waited as the Justice Department has held onto our money while one of the planet’s most powerful corporations paid its lawyers millions of dollars to kick us in the ribs."

We live in a dystopia

intunderflow• 4 years ago

Another reminder to not work for Amazon

uxp100• 4 years ago

And it’s Friday! Might as well give notice this afternoon.

kkleindev• 4 years ago

I personally find it so easy to forget how deeply ingrained the assumption of a working legal system is in everything I do.

joshstrange• 4 years ago

It has quite a chilling effect once you pull back the curtain. It really doesn't matter if you might be proven right in the end, nothing can replace what is lost in the interim.

codazoda• 4 years ago

That is terrifying.

What are some strategies you could use to insulate yourself from this, even a little?

I've got two ideas off the top of my head...

1. Cash stashed somewhere. 2. A lawyer with a big retainer paid years in advance.

Both of those would be really painful to do. What are some better ideas?

vorpalhex• 4 years ago

Advances expire, and your cash stash would likely be a crime (so even if you were innocent of the original crime, hiding assets from a warrant would be it's own charge).

This is why we as a society need to stop civil forfeiture. It deprives the accused of the right of defense.

megapolitics• 4 years ago

What are some strategies you could use to insulate yourself from this, even a little?

Don't inflate the value of real estate deals in exchange for kickbacks.

daenz• 4 years ago

The need for civil forfeiture demonstrates a clear failing of the system. The system says "we can't nail this person legally but we 'just know' they did something bad, so we'll break the rules." Same with warrantless wire tapping. The system is intended to err on the side of letting the guilty go, rather than infringe on the rights of innocent, not the other way around. If the government cannot figure out how to arrest and convict guilty people without resorting to unconstitutional measures, that's their failing.

I'm a realist though, and I accept the argument that criminals can be sophisticated enough to operate in that margin of error without getting caught. The system will need to get creative to handle these people, without being unconstitutional. Yes, I'm sure it is extremely hard work when compared to breaking the rules and calling it a day, but too bad. The willingness to put in extra work to avoid the illegal shortcuts is critical to preventing the total corruption of these institutions.

vmception4• 4 years ago

Bank accounts frozen?

Own at least 5 figures of Monero and Tornado Cash notes.

Forget about localbitcoins and ATMs, your lawyer can cash them into their IOLTA account for benefit of you. Assuming your lawyer has some crypto exchange instead of just a bank account. Otherwise do take the risk of using a local trader and ATM. You should probably fire your "everything crypto confuses me" lawyer. The government doesn't get to know who your lawyers are, and they don't know what your legal strategy will be which creates risk for them. Yes, they have theoretical capability of stalking you in person and all your communications including attorney-client ones, this alone can void their case. Form a couple relationships.

Congratulations, you can afford your rights again in America, and everything else.

protip: do it before you need to, because by then you probably can't.

mcast• 4 years ago

Do you have any recommendations for finding capable lawyers with cryptocurrency expertise (and not just using them as buzzwords)?

vmception4• 4 years ago

I don't, one thing you can do is check/subscribe to some legal journals and find the articles about cryptocurrency. Basically every lawyer or firm giving a quote is one familiar with the topic.

oh_sigh3• 4 years ago

Unless your lawyer is more of a consigliere, I would not recommend trying to loop them into your schemes to bypass government orders.

vmception4• 4 years ago

a) not your problem

b) government freezes accounts one by one, it isnt a sanction on you accessing the financial system, it is based on allegations raised against the money they find and have control over at financial institutions via an order on the licensed financial institutions looking for your name. it remains legal - if you are a citizen or not a foreigner on the OFAC list - to have fungible money.

RF_Savage• 4 years ago

Ah, civil forfeiture.

Now now also available to people other than minorities!

cryptonector• 4 years ago

We have very strong property rights in fixed physical property. We have very weak property rights in everything else. We used to have strong property rights in everything else, but not now. This is not a good recipe for a good society.

supernihil• 4 years ago

This story makes me angry. Go to europe, any country here has more security to offer you.

iliketrains• 4 years ago

Recently I've found the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit that among other things fights to end civil asset forfeiture practices. They have so many heart-breaking stories on their youtube channel!

For example, did you know that cops can seize all your cash during a traffic stop, regardless of you having receipts of withdrawal? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkeS_0NQUZs

Or, government took all of a family’s money (incl. from bank accounts of two teenage daughters) based on mere suspicion that one family member committed a crime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3hHVcIcdY

shrike• 4 years ago

The Institute for Justice is doing great work in this space. In addition to their civil forfeiture efforts I'm a huge proponent of their "License to Work" program and its efforts to limit onerous occupational licensing requirements. https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-2/. I especially like their approach to solving these problems. They defend individuals, this has an immediate and direct benefit. Then they use these cases to attract attention to the larger issue and drive regulatory change that way.

They are excellent stewards of donations, https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/521744337. If you are looking for a good cause for your donations this is one. https://ij.org/support/give-now/

I disagree with their position on school choice, I still donate.

dvdhnt• 4 years ago

Both incredibly horrifying and unsurprising.

Apes stronger together and all that.

farzher• 4 years ago

i thought for sure this was going to be about indian scam call centers, lol

coryfklein• 4 years ago

It's a lose-lose situation.

If you don't have civil forfeiture and the former Amazon employee ends up indeed guilty, it could be after decades of court battles that are literally paid for with money obtained through fraud, and during which time the family enjoys the benefit of the money (using it up on vacations, depreciating assets, etc) and the real victim is deprived of it permanently.

On the other hand, if you do have civil forfeiture and the Amazon employee is found not-guilty, then not only are they deprived of those years of enjoying their justly earned capital, they are also disadvantaged during trial by not being able to afford appropriately skilled representation.

In summary, if you do civil forfeiture then some not-guilty will have their assets unjustly seized and held. If you don't do civil forfeiture, then real victims of theft and fraud will be deprived of their property.

It seems to me though, that if a judge determines you have a high likelihood of success in a court of law, that can and should be used to take some advance – yet reversible – action, such as happens with court injunctions. And then save the final decision for the complete trial.

newusertoday• 4 years ago

one thing i am confused about is the seizure of wife's company. How is that possible? isn't the company an entity on its own? how can its assets be seiezed because of personal wrongdoings of the shareholders?

Amazon sent the FBI to take my family’s bank accounts

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