Justice Department Identifies Ten Amazon Staff Accepting Bribes, Writing Fake Negative Reviews, Targeting Products for Take Downs

When the malicious targeting of my books stopped suddenly, I thought someone must have finally caught the Amazon insiders responsible, and someone had, the Justice Department. A grand jury in Washington indicted six of those involved in a $100M fraud scheme, involving at least 10 Amazon staff who were being bribed. In exchange for bribes, corrupted Amazon staff facilitated attacks against competitors of those paying the bribes, using their inside access to Amazon's network to suspend competitors' accounts and product listings, remove favorable reviews and commentary, write fictitious negative product reviews designed to hurt sales, post spurious comments to intimidate victims and drive away customers, and much more.

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney's Office Western District of Washington issued a press release on September 18, 2020 naming the individuals who had been indicted. EPHRAIM ROSENBERG, 45, of Brooklyn, New York; JOSEPH NILSEN, 31, and KRISTEN LECCESE, 32, of New York, New York; HADIS NUHANOVIC, 30, of Acworth, Georgia; ROHIT KADIMISETTY, 27, of Northridge, California; and NISHAD KUNJU, 31, of Hyderabad, India, who are charged with conspiracy to use a communication facility to commit commercial bribery, conspiracy to access a protected computer without authorization, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud.

The names of the Amazon employees being bribed haven't been released yet. The defendants will make their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Seattle on October 15, 2020. The case is being investigated by the FBI, the IRS-Criminal Investigations, and the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs. The Grand Jury Charges are detailed in a 38-page indictment:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/press-release/file/1317986/download

Being on the receiving end of these self-styled "takedowns" for two decades, I recognized every tactic outlined by the prosecution in the charging document. These are the very tactics my competitors had been using to target my books on Amazon with the assistance of Amazon insiders, and as I've been blogging about just as long. My posts about the same are here:

The Devil Writes Romance Novels

https://readindies.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-devil-writes-heart-warming-romance.html

Speaking Out About Ugliness in the Publishing Industry
http://readindies.blogspot.com/2014/09/speaking-out-robert-stanek.html

Unethical Competitors
http://readindies.blogspot.com/2013/01/unethical-competitors.html

Authors who Trash Competitors
http://readindies.blogspot.com/2013/03/authors-who-trash-competitors.html

Authors who are Trolls
http://readindies.blogspot.com/2013/09/authors-who-are-trolls.html

Speaking out About Haters
http://readindies.blogspot.com/2013/06/haters.html

The Internet Isn't the New West
http://www.williamrstanek.com/internet-new-west.htm

My original blog at RobertStanek.com has posts about the same that go back to 2003:

http://www.robertstanek.com/rsblog1.htm

http://www.robertstanek.com/rsblog2.htm

http://www.robertstanek.com/rsblog3.htm

For years now, my every complaint about the targeting of my books was answered with retaliation, whether I wrote Amazon support or the Amazon executive team, and I finally have the definitive answer as to why. 

Despite these indictments Amazon is and remains the most corrupt marketplace on Earth, and this corruption goes from the bottom to the very top of the company, as evidenced by what has happened to my books for the past twenty years whenever I filed official complaints. Hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce flow through Amazon every year, and I'm certain many more former and current Amazon staff will be identified as part of similar schemes.

Thanks for reading, I’m William Robert Stanek, Microsoft’s #1 author for nearly 20 years, and author of over 250 topselling books.

Cloud Matters: Amazon Web Services. Right For Your Company?

This is the third in a series of articles based on the popular Cloud Matters lecture series I’ve been giving to executives and their top staff at global Fortune 100, 500 and 1000 companies since 2012. These articles are for working pros at all levels and are delivered without icing and sprinkles. 

Whether your organization is already in the cloud or looking to make a cloud move, an important question that needs answering is which service provider to choose. If you’ve looked at the field, you know there’s a veritable sea of options. Amazon Web Services, AWS, is one of these options and a dominate player in the cloud space.

Although AWS delivers a smorgasbord of services and solutions for many different types of cloud scenarios, AWS is especially well suited for Software As A Service (SAAS) and Platform As A Service (PAAS), making AWS a strong choice for mobile, app, and messaging solutions as well as platform development. AWS also is strongly positioned for use in implementation of virtual meeting, chat and streaming desktop solutions.


Where AWS falls short is with regard to Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS), especially if you want to say move your company’s data center to the cloud or implement a hybrid enterprise cloud. AWS is slowly improving in these areas (think tortoise), but the options are not as robust as those offered by their leading competitors (by far).


Another area where AWS underwhelms is customer service and responsiveness. When I advise clients regarding AWS, the first thing I do is look at the potential size of business they are looking to bring to Amazon, dividing them into four categories:


Under $1M annually, clients who will be lucky to get the time of day


$1M - $2M annually, clients who are likely to get middling responsiveness half the time


$2M - $5M annually, clients who will get better responsiveness most of the time


Over $5M, clients who will get best responsiveness


An example? Sure. Recently, I contacted AWS on behalf of a group of clients. The AWS rep who received my emails didn’t even seem to read them before responding with generic, auto responses. This happened time and again over the course of the several weeks, where I got half-answered responses and half-attempts to deliver needed resources and answers. Mostly, I was directed to generic online help and documentation.


My experience was similar to that of multiple other clients, who couldn’t get anyone at AWS to give them proper focus and attention. During the course, of my discussions with AWS, I asked if it weren’t possible to actually block out calendar time to work with me to answer questions, gather materials and resources, etc. I was again pointed to generic online help and documentation, and then I received no further replies or responses to my inquiries or follow up whatsoever. Again, similar to what clients who went with AWS experienced and largely a reason they were moving elsewhere or going with alternate solutions for additional cloud needs.


Something else I’ve told my clients. When you consider Amazon, also consider it’s 20-year history of abusive labor and business practices. Below the executive, the general staff at Amazon is notoriously underpaid and overworked, meaning even the well-intentioned contacts your teams work with may not be able to properly support you in the first place. And when it comes to ethical, fairness as a business partner? Losing your wallet due to overbilling, extra charges, etc will likely be the least of your worries.


So there you have it, AWS served up raw on a platter. As always, these are my opinions and I reserve the right to change my position. Who knows, maybe Amazon will stop its draconian ways, clean up its unfair practices and stop minting billionaire executives while underpaying and overworking other staff. I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen. In the meantime, it’s why I’ve directed $100M+ in business away from AWS since I started lecturing.


This is cloud matters, part 3. If this strikes a chord with you, I hope you’ll follow, share and sign your company up for Cloud Matters.


Thank you for reading,


William Robert Stanek
williamstanek at aol.com


Find my books online at:


https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=William+Stanek


https://www.amazon.com/William-R.-Stanek/e/B000APT6MS/


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22William%20Stanek%22?Ntk=P_key_Contributor_List&Ns=P_Sales_Rank&Ntx=mode+matchall


PS



Hope you found this article useful, informative or whatever. My upcoming books include: