A theft ring in Washington state sold millions of dollars’ worth of stolen goods on Amazon.com in a cunning six year scheme with the help of two contracted delivery drivers for the e-commerce site, new court documents show.
According to a search warrant affidavit unsealed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday, two storefront businesses posing as pawn shops bought the goods from a cohort of thieves, then had the items shipped to Amazon warehouses where they were stored until being sold online.
Aleksandr Pavlovskiy, 44, of Auburn, was identified as the ringleader of the scheme in the documents, citing his two stores, Innovation Best and Thrift-Electro, as the epicenter of the scandal.
The entities associated with the store owner have amassed at least $10 million in sales on Amazon since 2013, FBI agent Ariana Kroshinsky claimed in her affidavit.
No charges have yet been filed, however investigators have raided both of the pawn shops and the home Pavlovskiy.
Aleksandr Pavlovskiy, 44, of Auburn, was identified as the ringleader of the scheme in the documents, citing his two stores, Innovation Best and Thrift-Electro (above), as being at the epicenter of the scandal
In her affidavit, FBI agent Ariana Kroshinsky claims the entities associated with the store owner have amassed at least $10 million in sales on Amazon since 2013
A man identifying himself as Alex at one of the shops Wednesday told The Associated Press his business is legitimate, that he keeps good records and insisted he won’t be indicted for any wrongdoing.
Among those who allegedly provided stolen items to the pawn shops were two contracted Amazon drivers.
As per their contract, the men were meant to drive to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, pick up items being returned to the company and then bring them to an Amazon warehouse south of Seattle, before delivering them to post offices for shipping.
But instead, investigators say they routinely stole the goods and sold them to the pawn shops.
Amazon did not immediately return an email seeking comment about the case Thursday.
Among those who allegedly provided stolen items to the pawn shops were two contracted Amazon drivers (file photo)
As per their contract, the men were meant to driver to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (above), pick up items being returned to the company and then bring them to an Amazon warehouse south of Seattle, before delivering them to post offices for shipping. But instead, investigators say they routinely stole the goods and sold them to the pawn shops
The investigation began last summer when a police detective in the south Seattle suburb was perusing a record of pawn shop sales and noticed that one man had made a whopping 57 transactions across a five-month period.
The man was later found to be a driver for Amazon, but he has not yet been named publicly. He received nearly $30,000 from selling items to the pawn shops, the FBI said, between February and July last year.
Police initially arrested the driver, but released him from jail to avoid disrupting their larger investigation.
The other driver, identified as Abbas Zghair, was believed to be a roommate of the first.
Amazon told investigators that Zghair stole about $100,000 worth of property, including gaming systems, sporting goods and computer products — items he sold to one of the pawn shops for less than $20,000.
In an unrelated case, Zghair has been charged with murder after police said he shot and killed a man in an Auburn field in March, then fled to the Canadian border, where he was arrested trying to cross with a fake ID. He’s being held on $2.5 million bail.
Both drivers worked for Amazon contractor JW Logistics, based in Frisco, Texas.
One of Pavlovskiy’s warehouses (shown) allegedly acted as a temporary stash-point for the stolen goods
It was unclear how long Zghair had worked for the company, but in 2015, he was convicted of reckless driving in Lewis County after leading police on a chase in excess of 100 mph (161 kph), running red lights, driving across multiple lanes of travel and crashing into a field.
The company said a representative was not immediately available to comment after regular business hours Thursday.
Detectives staked out the pawn shops, Innovation Best in Kent and Thrift-Electro in Renton, and observed that they appeared to be paying shoplifters and drug users cash for new items from Home Depot, Lowes and Fred Meyer department stores.
Unlike typical pawn shops, they didn’t make sales; instead, the products were moved to a warehouse and to Amazon ‘fulfillment centers,’ from where they were shipped when they were sold on Amazon’s website by sellers using the handles ‘Bestforyouall’ or ‘Freeshipforyou’, the affidavit said.
According to a database of pawnshop transactions reviewed by Auburn police, the suspect pawn shops paid more than $4.1 million to sellers who brought them nearly 48,000 items in the past six years.
The items included allergy medication, razors, electric toothbrushes and tools in their original packaging. Detectives also conducted undercover operations in which they sold new items in their original packaging to the shops, which accepted them no questions asked, Kroshinsky wrote.
According to a database of pawnshop transactions reviewed by Auburn police, the suspect pawn shops paid more than $4.1 million to sellers who brought them nearly 48,000 items in the past six years (pictured: an inside view of the warehouse)
The FBI said it is awaiting more Amazon records to determine the full extent of Pavlovskiy’s enterprise, but that ‘estimated revenue from Amazon sales, for entities associated with Aleksandr Pavlovskiy, was at least $10 million since 2013.’
Pavlovskiy’s lawyer, Cristine Beckwith, did not return a message seeking comment.
The sale of stolen or counterfeit goods on Amazon or other digital marketplaces is not uncommon, but it was not immediately clear how many other schemes had reached such a volume of sales.
Last year, police raided a pawn shop in Monroe, north of Seattle, that they said had taken in $428,000 fencing stolen items, much of it on Amazon.
Jon Reily, a vice president for the digital consultancy firm Publicis Sapient and previously the head of e-commerce user experience for Amazon Devices, said preventing the sale of stolen goods is a major challenge for the company, but retailers can be held liable if they don’t do enough to ensure they’re not selling stolen goods.
Because it’s impossible for Amazon to review ‘every Tide pod’ that’s sold on its site, the company will likely need to do more to vet sellers, Riley said.
‘It’s a little bit of an arms race for Amazon to be able to take in product, put it on the web and get it to their customers in a speedy fashion and not unwittingly sell stolen stuff at the same time,’ Reily said.
‘Ultimately what Amazon has to do is show good faith if the government comes knocking on the door and says, ‘Look, you’re selling stolen goods.’