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Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

foxbusiness.com

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Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#91

Post by wpietri »

sys_64738 wrote: post #86
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Theranos a bad deal, or did the people who worked there get paid handsomely for their part in the fraud?

This. I wonder why those who worked there and were party to to it were not prosecuted in some way for their part in the deceit. They allowed it to continue by not whistleblowing the issues. They should be charged somehow.

I think a lot of the execs probably should be charged. And ditto for many of the lower-down workers as well if they participated in doing anything fraudulent.

However, I don't entirely want to blame the workers. US business culture very strongly leans towards a sort of neo-feudalism, where the CEO is always right, where one's allegiance is to the company, and where there are many techniques for silencing people. E.g., when I got laid off from Twitter they gave me zero notice, and made any severance conditional on signing a nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreement that went much further than the one I signed when I joined.

I had good savings and no family, so I turned them down. But a lot of people can't do that. Personally, I think we should make that illegal, and have every NDA specifically exempt reporting malfeasance.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#92

Post by hollerith »

wpietri wrote: post #89
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Theranos a bad deal, or did the people who worked there get paid handsomely for their part in the fraud?

They burned $1.4 billion dollars and produced nothing useful. It was bad.

"Bad" accurately describes Theranos's effect on society, but the comment you are replying to is probably asking about the effect of deciding to take a job at Theranos on the personal well-being of the individual making the decision.

After all, nobody is claiming that the Amazon dirt scam had a positive effect on society. The question in this thread was whether the dirt scammer's decisions were individually personally rational.

Your bringing up Theranos does not seem to me (and probably does not seem to grandparent) to shed any light on this question because it might have been individually personally rational for someone to take a job at Theranos: none of Theranos's non-management employees were required to give back their salary after Theranos was discovered to have been a fraud.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#93

Post by ryacko »

gingabriska wrote: post #65
rahulsom wrote: post #28

I'm curious why Amazon didn't investigate what was happening until his returns totaled $370k.

Due to scale and efficiency, they simply operate via check list approach. When I had an ecom company, a line worker used to check the package content and appearance (dents/scratches) and then he would measure it on a scale and check with the package's recorded weight before it was dispatched and algorithm would flag the orders where weight varied more than some specific ratio. It was pretty rudimentary but worked at…

This is the same problem that Archimedes was trying to solve.

Except now we have radar and 3D imaging.

Is Amazon actually involved in technology?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#94

Post by daxelrod »

chrisseaton wrote: post #85
thinkingemote wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see dirt around you in the world what is usually used for? Who uses it and are there other uses that occur out of sight but which are fundamentally essential for human survival?

I’ve no idea why anyone would need to use dirt. You’ll have to explain like I’m five, sorry.

Farming, landscaping, gardening.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#95

Post by chrisseaton »

daxelrod wrote: post #94
chrisseaton wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve no idea why anyone would need to use dirt. You’ll have to explain like I’m five, sorry.

Farming, landscaping, gardening.

People don't use dirt for that - they use compost, soil, earth, sand, gravel, things like that.

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#96

Post by nolite »

chrisseaton wrote: post #83
Alex3917 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did this man think was going to happen? That Amazon would never open the boxes he returned? To be fair Amazon actually sells bags of dirt, so if there is just a bar code and a bag of dirt then the person opening the box might not think anything of it.

> To be fair Amazon actually sells bags of dirt Amazon sell literal dirt? Why? What does anyone buy that for?

planting things..? Like flowers...?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#97

Post by chrisseaton »

nolite wrote: post #96
chrisseaton wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair Amazon actually sells bags of dirt Amazon sell literal dirt? Why? What does anyone buy that for?

planting things..? Like flowers...?

You’d plant them in soil. You’re not going to put a plant in dirt are you?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#98

Post by mnm1 »

Hilarious. The guy should be given a medal. He takes hundreds of thousands from Amazon and they don't close his account while regular people return or exchanges a few shitty, fake products and Amazon shuts then down stealing the prime fee. Now that's a scam. Amazon deserves this. It's pocket change for them, of course, but if I was the prosecutor I'd drop the charges. Why should Amazon get this projection when their customers get shafted when Amazon steals from them?

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#99

Post by wpietri »

hollerith wrote: post #92
wpietri wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They burned $1.4 billion dollars and produced nothing useful. It was bad.

"Bad" accurately describes Theranos's effect on society, but the comment you are replying to is probably asking about the effect of deciding to take a job at Theranos on the personal well-being of the individual making the decision. After all, nobody is claiming that the Amazon dirt scam had a positive effect on society. The question in this thread was whether the dirt scammer's decisions were individually personally…

In both cases it was rational in the short term: the money kept coming in.

And "individually personally rational" is a weird way to say "greedy sociopath who only cares about how much money was pocketed".

Re: Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt

#100

Post by algaeontoast »

i_am_nomad wrote: post #3
algaeontoast wrote: post #2

Wow, this is brilliant.

Presumably you are being sarcastic? There was no way he wasn’t going to get caught eventually.

Found a member of HN who can perceive humor, +1 for you my friend ;)
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