The other day we wrote about eBay sellers being sentenced to prison, so today we have to follow it up with Amazon sellers and buyers who have gotten busted. 

July 2021: According to court documents filed in Knoxville, TN, David Camp was charged with conspiring with others to fix prices of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs sold through Amazon Marketplace. The price-fixing conspiracy was ongoing from at least as early as May 2018 until at least Oct. 29, 2019. Camp is the first individual to be charged and the first individual to plead guilty in the ongoing investigation.

According to the one-count information, Camp and his co-conspirators agreed to raise and maintain the prices of DVDs and Blu-rays sold in their Amazon Marketplace stores. Amazon Marketplace is an e-commerce platform that enables third-party vendors to sell new or used products alongside Amazon’s own offerings.

October 2021: A Charlotte, North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, executing a return scheme that defrauded Amazon of at least $290,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Hudson Hamrick, 31, faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine.

Prosecutors said Hamrick made more than 300 fraudulent transactions between October 2016 and some time last year. According to charging documents, Hamrick ordered expensive products — such as electronics, guitars, tools, computers and other high-end consumer products — from Amazon, filed a return and received a full refund.

2020: Four people, Florida residents Bongwoo Roe, 88, Grace Yarbrough, 59, Lorinda Marlene Holm, 71, and Luis Gabriel Vazquez, 34, , were arrested by undercover detectives at the International Market World Flea Market near Auburndale on Saturday for allegedly selling “jail broken” Amazon Fire TV Sticks. “Jail broken” sticks allow users to stream TV shows, movies and other internet content without paying a subscription for the service.

“Essentially, the devices allow people to steal internet communications services,” read a press release from the sheriff’s office.

In 2018, Erin and Leah Finan from Indiana pleaded guilty to federal mail fraud and money laundering charges, and were sentenced to 71 months and 68 months in prison. Between 2014 and 2016, the Finans and Glumac stole and sold over 2,700 consumer electronics items such as GoPro digital cameras, Microsoft Xboxes, Samsung smartwatches, Microsoft Surface tablets, Apple Macbooks, and other consumer electronics. Their fraud exploited Amazon’s customer service policy by repeatedly falsely claiming that the electronics they ordered were damaged or not working, and then requesting and receiving replacements from Amazon at no charge. In total, the Finans stole, and Glumac sold, over $1.2 million in consumer electronics.

Also in 2018 Danijel Glumac, 29, of Indianapolis, pleaded guilty to money laundering and to fencing the items the Finans stole – that is, buying and selling stolen property across state lines – and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. Glumac pleaded guilty to buying the over 2,000 electronics items from the Finans and selling them to a buyer in New York. Glumac bought the items from the Finans in person, often in parking lots around Indianapolis, before marking up their prices and shipping them off to the New York buyer, who would then sell them to the public – often on Amazon. In total, after laundering the proceeds through bank accounts associated with a clothing business, Glumac made nearly $500,000 from the scheme.