Knowing your suppliers and that their goods are legitimate is a pretty basic function of a business, and calling people progressive to enforce that is a bit strange.

Amazon isn't a pawn shop. They have a lot of choice when it comes to dealing with known businesses.

It is a valuable activity that Amazon and eBay will ship any product to anyone at a fair price with a minimum of obligatory hoop jumping.

The more pressure they receive from the public and regulators to put a stop to those dastardly shoplifters, the more room Nike has to stop people from selling Nike shoes without a badge of certification from Nike.

Selling stolen goods hurts everyone, which is why it's a crime. It hurts the companies being stolen from, it hurts competing businesses who have a hard time competing legally, it hurts consumers, who get reduced choice due to reduced competition, and it hurts communities when their local chains shut down because organized crime has a place to fence their goods.

It's mind boggling that folks are defending the ability to sell stolen goods, while wanting to harshly punish petty theft.

> It's mind boggling that folks are defending the ability to sell stolen goods, while wanting to harshly punish petty theft.

I’m not seeing anyone defending selling stolen goods just saying it’s nearly impossible to tell where the goods come from.

Product gets refused for various reasons and the trucking companies aren’t really in the business of selling goods so they just get rid of it. I’ve seen them refuse a whole pallet because one box was run into by a forklift before.

Sometimes they tell you where to take it, sometimes they tell you to just get rid of it (usually only if it’s a couple cases) and if it’s not something you particularly want you just find some random person who does want it or a dumpster.

Not to mention all the other cases people have explained in this thread.

I am not promoting "punishing harshly petty theft" I am suggesting that the direction current prosecutors are going is to not punish theft at all.

I am also not denying that Amazon and eBay can operate as easy targets to fence stolen goods. What I am suggesting is that demanding Amazon "do something" about goods that fell off the back of a truck essentially means that any seller who doesn't get an Official Licensed Dealer badge or equivalent from a name brand company cannot do business on the internet.

The only way to combat this from Amazon's side is to ban all sales not authorized by the original manufacturer. There's no way for them to tell on their end whether goods were legitimately purchased or not, and any system used to track these sellers or prevent them from operating would give big brands a "delete" button on sales of their products worldwide.

As someone who is not a fan of software licensing for physical goods, this terrifies me, and bringing that regulatory environment as a response when we aren't willing to prosecute people for these crimes seems a bit much.

> I am suggesting that the direction current prosecutors are going is to not punish theft at all.

Your suggestion would generally be incorrect. Prosecutors in _some_ jurisdictions are choosing not to prosecute petty theft, but when organized crime cases are brought to them, they are prosecuting them.

Police, however, have done a poor job of investigating these crime rings, and in some cases have chosen not to make arrests to push a political agenda.

More enforcement against petty theft won't stop the organized crime problem.

You're going to an extreme on how to stop the illegal sales. Amazon could, for instance, stop allowing sales from any company that has fenced illegal goods through them. They could only allow well established businesses that have existed for x years to sell, or heavily inspect companies younger than x years. They could get lists of well-known resellers from manufacturers and heavily inspect businesses not on those lists.

If local pawn shops can do it I think Amazon can do it.

You seem to have a weird position that Amazon is some innocent player in this exchange -- they are making money from every one of these illicit sales. They enjoy benefit from looking the other way -- its not that there are no processes that can halt or greatly reduce the problem.

Theft is prosecuted ffs, the issue is that it has become so lucrative (because of the easy way to convert the stolen items to money via amazon/ebay) that the system is being flooded by people stealing. In no reality can you catch 100% of shoplifters, but there is a reality where you make both sides of the act more costly with less reward (high chance of getting cought and prosecuted + hard to gain value from the goods).

The government already has a mandate to prosecute crimes. It doesn't have a mandate to interfere with liberty. If they aren't going to do the job they already have why should they be allowed to find another excuse to avoid doing that job?

>Knowing your suppliers and that their goods are legitimate is a pretty basic function of a business

No it isn’t. That’s a pretty basic part of living in a country with rule of law.

>calling people progressive to enforce that is a bit strange

Indeed, it’s strictly regressive.

> No it isn’t. That’s a pretty basic part of living in a country with rule of law.

This is an incorrect framing: the law is that companies must know their suppliers, at least to the extent that they can demonstrate good faith compliance with laws around stolen, counterfeit, smuggled, etc. goods.

Given that Amazon has repeatedly been supplied evidence of fencing on its platform, it would be difficult to accept a defense from ignorance.

That is not the law, you’re just making up things out of whole cloth.

> Given that Amazon has repeatedly been supplied evidence of fencing on its platform, it would be difficult to accept a defense from ignorance

That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, Amazon being generally aware that there is fencing activity happening on their platform does not make Amazon liable.

> That is not the law, you’re just making up things out of whole cloth.

Every US state that I'm aware of makes it a crime to knowingly receive stolen property. Most additionally make it a crime to re-sell stolen property. On top of that, it's a Federal crime if the stolen property crosses state borders.

Here, for example, are NY's statutes on stolen property: Penal Law Ss. 165.40 through 165.65[1] (you'll need to navigate on that page to each section). In particular:

* It is not a sufficient defense to claim that the original thief has not been convicted or identified: § 165.50, bullet 1.

* Possession of stolen property encompasses the intent to sell that property: § 165.55, bullet 1.

> Amazon being generally aware that there is fencing activity happening on their platform does not make Amazon liable.

This implies passivity, when the relationship is an active one. If Amazon was an unstructured marketplace with individual business relationships between buyers and (potentially criminal) sellers, this argument might work. But that's not what FBA is, and it's not how these products are sold (you aren't buying Honest Abe's Big Brand Shampoo, you're buying Amazon-fulfilled Big Brand Shampoo).

[1]: https://casetext.com/statute/consolidated-laws-of-new-york/c...

> Every US state that I'm aware of makes it a crime to knowingly receive stolen property

For mens rea you’d need to know that the specific property you are receiving is stolen. Not that some of the amazon-scale quantities of property you’re receiving is inherently going to be stolen.

> This implies passivity, when the relationship is an active one

Doesn’t matter, Amazon still isn’t aware.

Mens rea is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. You can also be found culpable under the standards of reckless action or criminal negligence. This is also true in every state that I'm aware of.

"We run such a large and haphazard business that we inevitably do a little crime" is textbook culpability via negligence.

Edit: And, to be absolutely clear, I do not believe for one moment that it isn't within Amazon's technical capabilities to detect at least some percentage of likely stolen goods on their site. This is merely the weakest possible argument for responsibility on their part.

It’s literally impossible to sell goods from third parties at scale without inevitably accepting stolen goods.

There’s no amount of vetting that could solve this.

> "We run such a large and haphazard business that we inevitably do a little crime" is textbook culpability via negligence

Accepting goods for sale from third parties is not negligent.

That's why the standard is negligence and/or recklessness. Nobody expects Amazon to catch every single illegal use of their platform: the expectation is that they apply reasonable effort to doing so, including demonstrating a response to publicly known incidents of crime rings operating on their site.

I said exactly as much in my first comment.

Edit: This is at least the second time you've minimized an important piece of context: the problem is that they're accepting stolen goods, with multiple municipalities repeatedly warning them about it. Treating that as a "scale" issue doesn't wave the crime away, any more than throughput at a meatpacking factory would be a defense for the occasional employee being caught in the slaughter line.

> the expectation is that they apply reasonable effort to doing so, including demonstrating a response to publicly known incidents of crime rings operating on their site.

Again, rule of law. Reasonable effort is to do nothing unless they have information that would make a reasonable person believe that the specific goods were stolen.

There’s no expectation that Amazon would investigate the providence of the goods they receive.

> Edit: This is at least the second time you've minimized an important piece of context: the problem is that they're accepting stolen goods, with multiple municipalities repeatedly warning them about it.

No, I’m not. Amazon receives unimaginable amounts of goods, of which only a vanishingly small fraction is stolen goods.

> Treating that as a "scale" issue doesn't wave the crime away, any more than throughput at a meatpacking factory would be a defense for the occasional employee being caught in the slaughter line.

Are you serious? Surely the odds of an employee ever getting caught in the slaughter line must be greater than zero?

Surely you understand that if we were to infinitely scale the meatpacking factory, we’d be essentially guaranteed to see employees get chopped up.

> No, I’m not. Amazon receives unimaginable amounts of goods, of which only a vanishingly small fraction is stolen goods.

This simply does not matter in the eyes of the law. What matters is receiving stolen goods, period. The degree to which they do will solely determine the degree of the statute applied.

I think I'm just repeating myself at this point, so this will be the last time: there are different standards for culpability, and each exists for a reason. Accidents happen all the time, and we don't generally refer them for criminal prosecution unless they meet a standard of intentionality, knowledge, recklessness, or criminal negligence.

To use the slaughterhouse example again: nobody expects a slaughterhouse to be perfectly safe. However, we do expect a slaughterhouse to not recklessly or negligently expose its employees to danger. Nobody expects Amazon to perfectly avoid sales of stolen goods. However, we do expect them to pursue reports of stolen goods made by victims and investigating DAs.

I'm really interested why these "warnings" weren't subpoenas or warrants, especially if this is happening in multiple municipalities as you state. Is it some conspiracy across the US to not charge Amazon when probable cause is present, but instead send "warnings."

Not saying warnings don't happen when probable cause exists to prosecute a crime, but I think we're missing the content of these warnings before we get ahead of ourselves about what to think about them.

This is just baseless speculation on my part, but: municipalities don’t really want to take companies to court if they don’t have to. It’s expensive, politically risky, etc.

Besides, providing a warning actually helps the prosecution establish the crime: it’s much easier to argue negligence or recklessness if they can produce a history of repeatedly giving the company an opportunity to fix identified issues.

> Amazon isn't a pawn shop

Right, pawn shops are held to a higher standard. They have a relationship with the local police and are made to keep records. Amazon is a better fence than your average pawn shop.

Selling stolen goods isn't a legitimate business activity.

Selling goods is a legitimate business activity.

Yes -- but we are not talking about that we are talking about selling goods for which you have no record of purchase and obtained through theft.

You are taking a pretty bit straw man here -- is your claim that there is no way to enforce procedures to curb stolen goods while selling other goods? I think every other seller that has been used as a fence in history would beg to differ -- just go to your local pawn shop.

These are criminals, they can install microsoft office and create fake proof of purchase.

Completely pointless idea.

Stolen goods don’t come with a “stolen organically” label.

Your comment is not supported by the information in the article. Quite the opposite.

Actually you are both wrong :)

Regulating away legitimate secondary markets to sell on leaves us all paying higher prices. If brands and retailers believe it’s really retail theft causing all of this I invite them to track their goods better and run sting operations. I guarantee this type of money is going out the side door a truckload at a time, not the front door stuffed into someone’s shirt.

But the “progressive prosecutor problem” is a made up lie. Even in San Francisco where a DA recall vote actually succeeded it was obvious (and immediately proven[0]) that SFPD were actually just refusing to respond to calls:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/brooke-jenkins-sf-...