> In total, after their fraudulent reinstatement, the products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue.
Woah. Was not expecting it to be that big.
> More specifically, the Indictment alleges that the defendants served as consultants to so-called third-party (“3P”) sellers on the Amazon Marketplace.
Most companies have their employees sign onboarding documents or do an annual "business conduct" policy review. Any thoughts on a better way to manage something like this at scale? On one hand, I have a bad taste in my mouth from past employment situations that dictate "we own every though that enters your mind 24/7" - but consulting regarding your current employer, yikes.
There's some space been the extremes. You're normally not allowed to say anything that would be a company secret, but nothing should stop you from consulting on Amazon Marketplace as long as you use only public information you know very well. If you're already past ignoring company secrets, is unlikely preventing other employment would stop you already.
As for actual fixes, I think safety critical systems already have some answers: require 2 person confirmations, audit access, correlate repeated issues.
One is a former Amazon worker, who was involved in the activity while employed:
> In the course of the conspiracy described in the Indictment, the defendants paid bribes to at least ten different Amazon employees and contractors, including KUNJU, who accepted bribes as a seller-support associate in Hyderabad, India, before becoming an outside consultant who recruited and paid bribes to his former colleagues. In exchange for those bribes, the corrupted employees and contractors took the following illicit steps [...]
Don't outsource critical business logic (like whether an 8-9 figure account should be suspended) to Indian low level contractors?
This has long been a major issue with Amazon - often the people making the decisions as to whether a business with dozens of employees gets to keep selling or goes bankrupt are being paid less than US minimum wage in another country.
Most of those people weren't Amazon employees. The two employees indicted were India based (read the actual indictment, one of them moved to the US later).
Were the Amazon employees who accepted the bribes from India? I don't see that mentioned anywhere on the link. It seems the third party contractors were hired by the Amazon sellers to bribe on their behalf.
Edit: On reading the full indictment, there is no mention of the national origin of any employees of Amazon. The 6 accused knew each other and were exchanging insider information from undisclosed Amazon employees with third party sellers in return for a fee. A couple of them were ex-Amazon employees who presumably used their insider knowledge to build confidence with the third party sellers, but I don't think they are being charged for using that knowledge.
Not sure how this would be prevented if Amazon did not have operations in India?
Nishad Kunju of Hyderabad, India is the only defendant named as a former Amazon employee. The others bribed him, then he left the company and bribed his former colleagues.
Oh gosh I'm blind, I missed that line completely from the summary page.
But does that mean all the bribes were given to employees in India? I wonder why they are not being charged? Perhaps because that part of the fraud happened within the Indian jurisdiction? Or are maybe they are waiting on Indian law enforcement to formally charge them.
I’m of Indian heritage. This isn’t about the reviewers being Indian per se.
It’s about a compliance function being placed in a country with poor law enforcement, low pay relative to the activity they’re monitoring and geographic/cultural separation from HQ. If you read about a bank whose traders are in New York and whose risk and compliance are in Tokyo, what would you think? And Tokyo has decent cops and high pay.
This is, fundamentally, about Amazon treating this function as a cost centre versus brand defence.
It's hard to gauge intent, but I interpreted that message as "don't try to trim costs by outsourcing critical decisions to extremely low paid workers; especially in another country".
I mean, should we try to use euphemisms for China's control of chipmaking? Or the German emission cheating scandal?
Simply referencing a country or race doesn't make you racist. Interpreting it though...
So this style of casual racism / xenophobia is ok if directed at approved targets?
Pretty sure if it happened to be 6 African American individuals who were indicted it would not be acceptable to say "Don't outsource your work to low-level Black contractors".
> Pretty sure if it happened to be 6 African American individuals who were indicted it would not be acceptable to say "Don't outsource your work to low-level Black contractors".
Notice the word in italics? The US would still have jurisdiction.
GovCloud is also not allowed to be administered by Indians but is allowed to be run by Indian Americans. It can’t be run by people from Great Britain either.
The difference is that people from other countries are generally not subject to US jurisdiction. Certainly the deterrence effect from stories like this is far larger for US based employees and contractors than foreign ones.
It's not xenophobic to prefer US employees for sensitive positions of trust, where the rule of US law is relevant.
Yes, generally putting critical access in the hands of foreign contractors, especially in third world or developing countries is a terrible idea. It has nothing to do with race. If you outsource to white Russian contractors in Russia you could be just as fucked.
Except the fact that Amazon's office in Hyderabad India is the their largest in the world [1]. We are not talking about contractors - they are employees like any in their Seattle one, many actually do relocate back from US to India office.
I think the implication is that someone poorly paid and lightly supervised is more susceptible to bribery. Whether they are a contractor or full employee, or the color of their skin, is irrelevant. I personally doubt pay makes a difference, either you have integrity or you do not.
Correct, and if a US political party outsources their IT management to white folks overseas in eastern Europe (outside of EU) / Russia or former Russian states where US law does not apply they'd be equally idiotic.
If a company was outsourcing critical business logic to, say, Nigeria, I would absolutely criticize them for that. The color would have nothing to do with it.
Than why not say 'in India', instead of 'Indian'? There are many Indian people living and working in the US, with US citizenship. Conversely, if they had been US citizens ('Americans') living in India, the legal problem may have been similar.
Saying 'low-level Indian contractors' brings to mind a specific, at least somewhat xenophobic, image,and is very often used very casually.
You seem to have assumed that the poster is talking about ethnicity or heritage rather than citizenship or geographical ___location.
One of the things that I like about HN over (say) Reddit is the guidelines for comments work pretty well. I’m particularly thinking of “Assume good faith.” - absent any other evidence, it’s better to assume that other posters are not racist assholes if you’re not sure if someone is talking about citizenship versus ethnicity.
Referring (india, a country not a color) to Issues relating to doing business/relying on decisions via work takin plce in a country other than the one where the business and its customers are is a bit different than ‘black’
Credible research suggests that levels of honesty differ across countries:
Gächter, S. and Schulz, J.F., 2016. Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies. Nature, 531(7595), pp.496-499.
Hugh-Jones, D., 2016. Honesty, beliefs about honesty, and economic growth in 15 countries. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 127, pp.99-114.
NB: I'm the author of the latter.
This doesn't have to imply racism, there are numerous reasons why people might behave differently in different environments. Different culture, different institutional incentives, a different economic environment....
I assume it would be perfectly fine if they directed these kinds of decisions to Indian high level FTE’s. The problem here is not that they’re Indian :P
Casual racism is not ok man, this has nothing to do with nationality. I know tech industry workers are sensitive about outsourcing, but don't make it about nationality. If these companies are happy to sell in India they should not have problem hiring.
India regularly extradites people who have been indicted in USA.
It can be, Indian call center scammers are more scared of FBI than Indian law enforcement.
Criminals have different value set nothing to do with nationality. We still have a article on the front page about an American CEO embezzing funds. You will not hear anyone saying be careful of American CEOs.
If criminals in India are more afraid of the FBI than Indian law enforcement, that tells me Indian law enforcement is bad. I want my employees to be under the jurisdiction of good law enforcement, not bad law enforcement.
You originally stated that: This has long been a major issue with Amazon - often the people making the decisions as to whether a business with dozens of employees gets to keep selling or goes bankrupt are being paid less than US minimum wage in another country.
So I'm assuming you're saying that they shouldn't hire in India apparently because of less than minimum wage. So these kinds of things can be avoided if Amazon were to hire decision makers who make minimum wage or whatever the lowest amount they can get away with in US?
As you know, the sellers and buyers are global. So should Amazon divide its operations so that Indian employees only process sales and purchases based in India? What happens with sales from India to USA or vice-versa?
I am failing to grasp what exactly it is that you are saying here. With respect to extradition, India and USA already have a treaty.
>So I'm assuming you're saying that they shouldn't hire in India apparently because of less than minimum wage.
That's not what I said.
>So these kinds of things can be avoided if Amazon were to hire decision makers who make minimum wage or whatever the lowest amount they can get away with in US?
That would address some of the issues and not others, all of which were laid out in my original comment. (Hint: read the words after "Indian".)
>process sales and purchases
This had nothing to do with my comment, which is clearly not about people processing sales.
>That would address some of the issues and not others, all of which were laid out in my original comment. (Hint: read the words after "Indian".)
I originally literally quoted the entire sentence from your original comment, which came after "Indian". We could do without the snide remarks. I was genuinely trying to get your position, but all you are doing is making snide remarks and attempting to make yourself sound more knowledgeable than you are about the issue.
If someone thought I meant definition B, I'm sorry about that, I thought it was clear in context, given that OP listed the ___location and not the ancestry.
Woah. Was not expecting it to be that big.
> More specifically, the Indictment alleges that the defendants served as consultants to so-called third-party (“3P”) sellers on the Amazon Marketplace.
Most companies have their employees sign onboarding documents or do an annual "business conduct" policy review. Any thoughts on a better way to manage something like this at scale? On one hand, I have a bad taste in my mouth from past employment situations that dictate "we own every though that enters your mind 24/7" - but consulting regarding your current employer, yikes.
I guess ethics aren't boolean to some.