It’s January 2022 and along with the new year comes new Amazon seller arrests.

If you read our December 2021 blog post called 9 Amazon Sellers and Buyers Who Went to Prison you already know that the Amazon DVD category was dominated by a handful of sellers who decided to work together to “price fix” the market. If you’re not familiar with price fixing, its when multiple businesses collude to raise the price, and keep it firm, so there becomes no way for a buyer to purchase it without paying the inflated cost.

Back in July 2021 only one of the Amazon DVD sellers was arrested, Mr. David Camp. Fast forward 6 months and the list has grown to include Emmanuel Hourizadeh, Raymond Nouvahian and Morris Sutton.

The first arrested, Mr. Camp, was sentenced a couple days ago (1-7-22) however we have not been able to find out what the judge decided will be adequate punishment. We do know that the maximum punishment for price fixing (an Anti-Trust violation) is 10 years in prison, up to 1 million dollars in fines, reimbursement to all individuals who purchased a price-fixed product and more financial penalties.  Another major issue these corrupt DVD sellers face is that due to being online sellers they were shipping the merchandise across state lines, which also makes it an interstate crime. And if you’re wondering how many DVDs Mr. Camp sold, his sales for the price fixed items total over a half million dollars, so this could be pretty severe. Clearly the government is taking it seriously.

The full court filing is available for free on Justice.gov, it’s a pretty interesting read, especially if you’re an online seller.  We will keep you updated when more is known about this case.