Six people face charges for allegedly bribing Amazon staff to boost sellers at the expense of others.
The US is cracking down on a complex scheme to boost some third-party Amazon sellers at the expense of others. A grand jury in Washington has indicted six people for allegedly bribing Amazon employees and contractors to gain a foothold in the online marketplace.
For starters, the six appear to have paid to receive "exclusive benefits" for accounts , such as sales in restricted categories and competitive data.
They also allegedly forced Amazon employees to lift account bans and even help with attacks against their rivals. To achieve this, they used algorithmic information to spam competitors' listings with false negative reviews , the Justice Department alleged.
It is also reported that they received confidential data, such as revenue, customers and advertising campaigns of their rivals. With this bribe, they appear to have obtained data on competitors from Amazon's secret information, such as its search engine, enforcement methods and reviews, according to Engadget.
The list of defendants includes Rohit Kadmisetty, Nishad Kunju, Kristen Leccese, Joseph Nilsen, Hadis Nuhanovic and Ephraim Rosenberg. They all face charges of commercial bribery, unauthorized access to protected computers and wire fraud.
The group of fraudsters will make their first appearance in a Seattle court on October 15.
The case doesn't come at the best time for Amazon. The company is familiar with issues with unscrupulous third-party sellers and has been accused of using seller data to create competing products and gain an unfair advantage.
Although the two cases are not connected, the latest case of alleged bribery does not help Amazon's claims that it is handling seller mistreatment.
