
FBI: Delivery drivers involved in Amazon theft ring - georgecmu
https://www.wthr.com/article/fbi-delivery-drivers-involved-amazon-theft-ring-1
======
crazygringo
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.

~~~
one2know
1\. Amazon is revenue focused

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.

~~~
mlevental
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.

~~~
freehunter
Look into the Broken Windows theory:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

If you let criminals get away with breaking into someone's house and stealing
things, it sends a message to other people that crime is allowed. Crime rates
start to rise because no one is doing anything about it. People who were not
criminals before are now comfortable being criminals because they know they
won't be caught.

If you don't prosecute the small crimes, it often leads to bigger crimes.

~~~
mlevental
I pre-empted you

>deterrent so that it's not 4%?

My point is imprisoning someone to "send a message" rather than for the effect
of the crime is cruel.

~~~
freehunter
No, your response indicates you do not understand the broken windows theory at
all. I would suggest you go back and read it. I linked it for a reason.

You're imprisoning criminals for the _crimes they committed_ , not just to
send a message. But imprisoning criminals for committing crimes _does send a
message_ and that message is that _crime is not tolerated_.

You might be okay with someone breaking into your house to steal your personal
property without your permission but I'm going to guess you're not okay with
someone breaking into your house and murdering your entire family. Would you
then argue that it would be cruel to imprison the murderer? Because it would
just be to "send a message" the murder is wrong?

No, of course not. They committed a crime, and that's what they're being
punished for. Punishing criminals does not reduce the crime rate. It's the act
of _not_ punishing them that _increases_ the crime rate.

Note that this comment does not remove the need for you to read the linked
wiki article.

~~~
mlevental
I responded to your comment rather than broken windows policy, on which the
consensus is not at all as solid as your tone suggests

[https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-
poli...](https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-
policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/)

>recent systematic review by Braga, Welsh and Schnell (2015) found that
policing strategies focused on disorder overall had a statistically
significant, modest impact on reducing all types of crime. This positive
effect was driven by the success of place-based, problem-oriented
interventions. In contrast, there was no significant overall impact of
aggressive order maintenance strategies. Thus, they conclude that police can
successfully reduce disorder and non-disorder crime through disorder policing
efforts, but the types of strategies matter.

That was entailed in me conceding that letting these people go free would
probably bump the shrink to 4%.

Now your comment was

>If you let criminals get away with breaking into someone's house and stealing
things, _it sends a message_ to other people that crime is allowed.

To which I explicitly called back to by responding

>My point is imprisoning someone to "send a message" rather than for the
effect of the crime is cruel.

------
unnouinceput
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.

~~~
ikeboy
They're not saying it all came from Amazon. Much of it seems to have been
shoplifted from local stores.

------
Zanni
How does a guy (Zghair) convicted of reckless driving get a job as a _driver_?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
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.

~~~
alistairSH
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.

~~~
chillydawg
I mean, you could just not break the speed limit...

~~~
alistairSH
In most states, going 10 over is not a criminal offense (most traffic offenses
!= criminal offenses since the mid-1970s in the US, which is why you can
usually pay the fine remotely, no court, no lawyer, no jail). It is a criminal
offense in VA. And the police use it to selectively harass people.

Anyways, that was just one example. Reckless driving ("you pulled away from
that light too fast" even when you were slower than the minivan in the next
lane), illegal lane change ("I saw you swerve" even when you didn't), and
other statutes are used to pull over anybody the police want with impunity.

------
jaclaz
Last sentence in the article:

>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.

~~~
Buge
That's not really the last sentence in the article. There's an ad break, then
a bit more stuff.

~~~
jaclaz
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.

------
victor9000
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.

~~~
wbl
Remember Lester? Every pawnshop transaction is reported to the police
department in some places to stop fencing and recover stolen property.

------
goldcd
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??

~~~
a3n
> 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.

------
Animats
Brings a new meaning to "Fulfilled by Amazon".

------
mehrdadn
It was a little intriguing reading this after reading another article:
[https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746600105/1-in-4-food-
deliver...](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746600105/1-in-4-food-delivery-
drivers-admit-to-eating-your-food)

Is delivery drivers stealing from customers' orders the new thing?

~~~
AJ007
If you look at how much the overall volume of deliveries has increased in the
past year, it doesn’t seem abnormal. You have something with a very low
barrier to entry, and plenty of alternatives to switch between. Contrast this
with, for example, working for the US Postal Service. While companies like
Uber may resist contractor background checks, when these contractors are doing
things like raping your customers, suddenly those background checks may have
protected your brand.

My friend has had Amazon packages stolen before, by the delivery person, who
thought that as long as he took a photo of the package on the door step he’d
win the dispute. I guess he didn’t see the security camera.

------
JudgeWapner
Steal from Grandmas porch: labelled a "porch pirate", told by police "we don't
respond to property crimes, fill out a police report online".

Steal from the richest man in the world: FBI is on the case with military-
grade weapons, tactics and surveillance.

~~~
KibbutzDalia
In California, at least, Porch Pirates have the law on their side.

California Voters overwhelmingly voted to end the "three strikes" laws, and
also make any theft of less than $950 a misdemeanor. See
[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_P...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_Penalties_for_Some_Crimes_Initiative_\(2014\))

This means you can steal packages from FedEx and UPS or Amazon deliveries from
porches to your heart's content (not USPS because they are covered by federal
law) and almost certainly never have to spend more than a day or two in jail
if you're caught.

The $950 limit was proposed because Californians thought it was "not fair" to
be charged with a felony for stealing an iPhone.

In this particular case here, Bezos makes his money back because the article
indicated that the stolen items were being sold on Amazon! He'll get paid
either way.

~~~
JudgeWapner
I heard about that. Local news interviewed a 7-11 owner who said he's toast
because they're so low-margin to begin with, and shoplifting is already high.
Maybe one good thing that could come from this: stores move to either online-
pickup only, or browse large posters/catalogs in the store and scan what you
want, then pick up from the cashier. Products are located in a warehouse
divided from customers and they pack your bags for you. 0 shoplifting loss
(yes employees could steal), but the benefit for me is more efficient
shopping.

~~~
massysett
The browse then pickup concept is an old one. Service Merchandise and Best did
it years ago. They’re out of business so maybe it didn’t work so well.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant)

~~~
JudgeWapner
They had tablets in the 90's. They never took off so it's obviously not a
viable product.

