The reality of Amazon's shady bribery practices has been revealed, including the existence of intermediaries who act as agents for Amazon employees to lift sales bans and eliminate competitors.
It has been reported that there are intermediaries who offer to bribe Amazon employees to restore accounts of sellers who have had their sales suspended on Amazon Marketplace. When a seller submits evidence to Amazon, it has come to light the reality of a black market where Amazon employees are illegally using internal information and authority.
Inside the Shadow Market Selling Access to Amazon Employees - Bloomberg
Online retailer Jack Nekara invented and patented ' BED SCRUNCHIE ,' an adjustable elastic band for securing sheets to mattresses, and began selling it on Amazon around 2020. It became so popular that its annual sales reached approximately $6 million (about 900 million yen), with most of those sales coming from Amazon.
However, because he was running a campaign where customers could receive rewards for posting product reviews, Amazon suspended Nekara's account in November 2024 for 'violating the product review policy.' Nekara says the timing of the account suspension was terrible, as he had just stocked 30,000 'bed scrunchies' and had TV commercials scheduled to air.
A few weeks after his account was suspended, Nekara was contacted by a woman named Jenna, a Chinese immigrant living in California, who offered to help him sell his products on
As a result, Jenna obtained records of Nekara's account suspension from an acquaintance who was an Amazon employee. She then suggested to Nekara that he could recover the approximately $90,000 (approximately 14 million yen) in sales that had been frozen for violating review manipulation rules by 'paying a 20% bribe to an Amazon employee.'
Nekara did not accept Jenna's offer. Jenna further stated that 'if Nekara is willing to sell the company at a low price, an acquaintance can bring his account back online,' but then she ceased contact. Ultimately, Nekara reported Jenna's offer to an Amazon representative, providing recorded conversations and screenshots.
According to Bloomberg, intermediaries connecting sellers with Amazon employees paid Amazon employees to handle tasks such as lifting sales suspensions, recovering frozen funds, and obtaining inside information on competing products. In many cases, as Nekara experienced, they would first provide evidence of access to the inside information by showing screenshots of account records.
Amazon, upon receiving Nekara's contact, stated that they would 'conduct an investigation' and promised to send instructions via email on how to share evidence, but Nekara says they have not heard from them since. Amazon also stated that the employee who leaked Nekara's account information had already been fired for other misconduct.
In an email statement, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said, 'As one of the world's largest online marketplaces, we are always at risk of malicious actors exploiting our business, committing fraud, or otherwise engaging in unethical activities. In rare cases, our employees may be involved in such activities. We invest heavily in this area and have dedicated teams and systems in place to prevent all forms of fraud, including those committed by our own employees.'
According to an NBC News report from 2020, a seller who had been selling massagers on Amazon for four years noticed that their most popular product was being split into separate product pages based on color. When they contacted Amazon and had it corrected, the product pages were split again the very next day. Furthermore, at times the product description and images were altered, and at other times the product was categorized as an adult product. This is a type of spam known as 'black hat' spam, where sellers pay exorbitant fees to manipulate listing information with the aim of unfairly disparaging competitors' products.
Why is Amazon overflowing with products from mysterious companies and brand names you've never heard of? - GIGAZINE
Federal prosecutors uncovered an international bribery scheme involving Amazon sellers and employees in 2020, resulting in five convictions in the United States. Furthermore, in 2025, an investigation was launched in India into more than 20 former Amazon employees suspected of accepting bribes from shipping companies in exchange for delivery routes.
However, the bribe offer that Mr. Nekara experienced is an example of how Amazon's black market continues to thrive. Professor Henry Pontel of John Jay Criminal Justice University pointed out, 'Amazon outsources many of its marketplace functions to employees in low-wage countries like India and China. Because law enforcement cooperation between these countries and the United States is limited, the fight against bribery is more difficult, and Amazon's online marketplace has become a hotbed of crime. Employees who try to sell information for cash know that they are relatively unlikely to be prosecuted. Even if someone blows the whistle, China in particular is very strict about American companies seeking help from law enforcement.'
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