Amazon seller reveals rare glimpse of shadow bribery market – The Mercury News
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Sunday, June 28th 2026<br>Today's e-Edition
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Mike Nusinkis and Jack Nekhala at the Bed Scrunchie offices in Staten Island. (Emil T. Lippe/Bloomberg)
By Bloomberg | wordpress@medianewsgroup.com | Bloomberg<br>PUBLISHED: June 24, 2026 at 6:52 AM PDT | UPDATED: June 24, 2026 at 8:38 AM PDT
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...<br>By Spencer Soper, Bloomberg
In December, online merchant Jack Nekhala got in touch with Amazon.com Inc. with an urgent message.
Nekhala told an Amazon representative that a woman he didn’t know had contacted him with an intriguing offer: She could bribe an Amazon employee to help him retrieve $90,000 in funds that the e-commerce giant had frozen after suspending him over an alleged violation of review policy.
Hoping to ingratiate himself with the company and restart his business, Nekhala offered to provide evidence, including recorded conversations and screen shots, that he said proved Amazon personnel were peddling inside information and influence. The smoking gun, Nekhala told the representative: information about his seller account. Only certain Amazon employees are supposed to have access to such details, but Nekhala had received them from the woman on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app.
Nekhala’s experience, which he documented and shared with Bloomberg, provides a rare glimpse into an international black market that has been a persistent scourge of Amazon’s online store. On one side are sellers looking for a variety of favors: a competitive edge over their rivals, information on how to boost sales, a way to get themselves unsuspended. On the other are middlemen who lurk on message apps like Telegram, WeChat and WhatsApp offering access to people inside Amazon who can get things done for a price.
Typically, such offers surge during key moments on the retail calendar, including Amazon’s Prime Day sale that runs this week, and the holiday shopping season from Black Friday to Christmas.
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It’s impossible to determine the scope of the illicit activity, but it’s an open secret among Amazon sellers and consultants, who are frequently approached on social-media platforms and messaging apps. “The message is always the same: ‘I’m going to show you screenshots to prove I have inside access,’” said Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee who runs a seller consulting firm. “It starts with the internal notes. That’s the bait on the hook.”
In 2020, federal prosecutors exposed an international bribery scheme involving Amazon sellers and employees. The ring allegedly extracted about $100 million in unfair advantages by bribing Amazon employees in Asia to help them sell more products and sabotage their competitors. Five people in the US were convicted and received jail terms or probation. Last year, law enforcement officials in India began investigating more than 20 former Amazon employees suspected of accepting bribes from trucking companies in exchange for routes, according to The Times of India.
After Nekhala reported his own experience to Amazon, the representative committed to “do some digging” and to email him instructions on how his evidence could be shared, according to a recording of the conversation. But Nekhala said he never heard back. The employee who leaked his personal information had already been fired for unrelated misconduct, according to Amazon.
“As one of the world’s largest online marketplaces, there’s always the risk of bad actors attempting to exploit, defraud or otherwise scam our business,” Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in an emailed statement. “On very rare occasions, an employee can be involved in such instances. We invest heavily in this area and have dedicated teams and systems in place to prevent all types of fraud, including by our own employees.”
Amazon didn’t explain why no one got back to Nekhala after the online merchant offered to share his evidence with the company.
Bed Scrunchie
Nekhala invented the Bed Scrunchie, an adjustable elastic band that clips sheets to a mattress. He patented the product and began selling it on Amazon...