Amazon’s Campaign To Crush The Nelson Family: The Ugly Truth Behind Corporate Power And Greed

Welcome everyone. My name is Justin Paperni, as you know, with white collar advice and I'm so privileged and grateful to welcome my good friend Amy Nelson to our show. Welcome, Amy. Hi Amy. When I went through the criminal justice system, while hard, it was easier because I did it. I clearly crossed the line. I broke the law and I went to federal prison. In your case, you and your family are enduring such pain as a result of some choices through no fault of your own. Before we get into the story of I would love everyone to learn from a viral TikTok video you filmed. And that's where I'm going to transition to and play it and then we're going to start our discussion.

Amazon accused my husband and a bunch of others of a crime. The background is they broke a contract with a real estate developer and that the only way that they could get out of breaking their contract is if the real estate developer was found guilty or pled guilty to a felony. So they went to the Department of Justice and said this entire criminal scheme happened around real estate and I think they accused like 10 people of their crime, including my husband. I want you to know what happens in America. Accused of a crime. My husband was never charged with a crime. But here's what we've lived through so far, and this has been a process that's been going on for three years. Amazon asked the Department of Justice to seize my husband's bank accounts. In America, the government can take your money on suspicion of a crime. They don't have to charge you, prove you're guilty or anything. They just take the money and say it's a crime. So in the middle of May, in 2020, about two months, three months after Amazon accused my husband of a crime or, and two months into the global pandemic, the FBI emptied our bank accounts, including my personal bank accounts. So we had no money to pay our mortgage, pay for lawyers, pay for our kids food. The government went so far as to seize money from our lawyers bank account that we had paid our lawyers. I mean wild. So they did that. And then about two weeks later, as another tactic to try to help Amazon out and get their felony, the government conducted an armed search warrant of our home in Seattle. They brought four armed agents for Amazon's private contract issue to raid our home. People die in the execution of search warrants every day. But I guess Amazon's contract needs were more important than like just talking to someone or checking Amazon's allegations. After that, the next thing that happened is, you know, my husband's lawyers Said to prosecutors, if you're going to charge him with a crime, can he just come in and, like, surrender to you? And the prosecutor said, no, we won't allow that. That's something that, like, Bernie Madoff got. He was able to do that, to just kind of walk in. They said my husband, they would show up at some time with guns and drag him out of the house in

front of our little girls to arrest him.

They never did. He was never charged with a crime. But that threat was impossible to live with. The other thing that they did is that they said, well, we'll charge someone you love with a crime, so. Or people that work with you. Like, they subpoenaed my nanny, who we paid over the table, but they subpoenaed her, dug into her finances. They dug into every single bank account we had, every job. They questioned how much money my husband was making as a consultant. Like, he wasn't allowed to make that much money. They went after my dad. This is my father's bank account. He'd had a kidney transplant two weeks before. And I just think it's pretty wild how much power and who can get the FBI and the DOJ to act and why. Amazon has billions of dollars of government contracts and hires hundreds of former FBI agents and prosecutors. And I can't help but wonder if that's why this happened.

Amy, before I get into the questions, I want to make clear we're not indicting everyone that works in the government or everyone that works at Amazon. There are amazing people, though, in this instance, we believe there's an injustice that. That is taking place in a great deal of pain to your family. So you just covered it in that TikTok video. Can you summarize again how your family became involved in this process?

Yeah, and I want to just emphasize that, Justin, it's, you know, it's. There's a lot of really great people who work both at Amazon and at the doj. But my family's experience hasn't really reflected that. And my husband worked for Amazon Web Services for eight years. Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon, and they build data centers, which is where the Internet lives. The Internet doesn't actually live in the cloud. It lives here on planet Earth with us in these really big industrial buildings. And my husband left Amazon in 2019, June of 2019. But in April of 2020, we got a knock on the door, and it was the FBI. And they were. They said my husband was a target of a federal investigation. We learned over a long period of Time that it was actually Amazon who had gone to the DOJ and accused my husband of a crime. Now, right before Amazon went to the doj, Amazon participated in breaking a contract with one of their business partners called ipi. And together, Amazon and IPI broke a contract with the real estate developer. It was a very strangely worded contract, and the only way they could break that contract is if the developer pled guilty or was convicted of a felony. So Amazon and their business partner, IPI had 100 million reasons, and as in $100 million of reasons to try to get a felony for this real estate developer. And Amazon accused my husband of steering real estate deals to the developer in exchange for kickbacks. That was a specific allegation, and that's a crime called private sector honest services fraud.

Amazon accuses your husband, they go to the doj, this investigation begins. What do you do? Where are you living? What do you do next?

Yeah, so the knock on our door came around 6:45am on April 2, 2020. So we're two weeks into the pandemic. We lived in a neighborhood of Seattle called West Seattle with our four little girls, who at the time ranged in age from 8 months to 5. So we had four really little kids. They were actually bouncing in a bouncy house when the FBI showed up. And, you know, it was. It was a stunning experience because we really had no idea why they were there. And to explain this, you know, what my husband did, he believed did not violate his employment contract. And so to have the federal authorities show up with guns is. It's not what you expect. You know, we call. We found a lawyer. Right? That was the first thing that we did, as you do. And I practiced law for a decade. I don't practice anymore, but I reached out to people that I knew that might be able to help. Now, Amazon was asking prosecutors, not in Seattle, but in the Eastern District of Virginia, on the other side of the country, to charge my husband with a crime. That was pretty scary to me too, because Eastern District of Virginia, it's a brilliant office of prosecutors. They are tasked with really big national security cases. And, you know, and I'm sitting here wondering, what, what is going on? Why are we being drawn into this and why is it on the other side of the country? But it was just a really scary day. And the other thing that happened that day, when they told my husband he was the target of a federal investigation, is they also gave him a letter telling him that they intended to seize funds from certain bank accounts from his business and from personal bank accounts. And, you know, at that point, I had literally never heard of civil forfeiture.

So something that our team talks a lot about is the cost of this. Even people in our community who are multi millionaires will say, as rich as I may be, I can't compete with the endless resources of the government. And in your case, not being a multi millionaire many times over. I want you to discuss, if you're open to discussing, the immediate collateral consequences that accompanied learning after you learned that you were the target of an investigation.

Yeah, it's kind of like I still feel a tightening in my chest when I think about it, because it's something that we're still experiencing. But for us, the consequences were absolutely immediate. When we got that letter telling my husband that they intended to seize certain bank accounts, we very quickly said, we are not moving money out of any of those bank accounts because we don't want to be accused of anything further. Like, the money in those bank accounts stays there. We had money in another bank account, just a high yield savings account. That's why it wasn't like we were purposely keeping money in 15 places. But we had checking accounts, business accounts, and a high yield savings account. So, you know, we immediately, when my husband found an attorney, you know, they said, if you're going to work with us, we need a very big retainer. Because if they're, you know, my husband did not believe he committed a crime. And when you receive a letter telling you you're the target of a federal investigation, like any lawyer would tell you, you're getting indicted and you' indicted soon. And so it was a very quick calculation that my husband would be indicted and that he would be going to trial and that it would cost at least a million dollars is what we were told. So we wired every dollar in our high yield savings account to his attorneys so that money was gone. And then the money, the rest of the money, the government had said they intended to seize. So we're sitting there saying, we have four little girls, a mortgage. Like, what do we do? And so. And all of this started making me feel like a criminal, if that makes sense, because I'm like, well, I opened a new bank account and started putting my paycheck in the new bank account, and my husband opened a new bank account and started putting his consulting. Consulting invoices in that new bank account. So we lived off the money that we were making with our lawyers holding the bulk of the money that we had. And then in May of 2020, just on a random Thursday, the government did seize our bank accounts. And they didn't just seize the bank accounts. They had set out in the letter in April. They seized everything. And it's not that your money is frozen. The government literally gets a warrant to take the money out of your bank accounts and it is gone. And the government here in this situation also seized from our lawyer's client trust account all of the money that my husband had paid our lawyers.

So you can only surmise that Amazon, probably more aggressively, I would have no influence to reach out to them. The influence that Amazon has in pushing these prosecutors to such a degree is with hopes that you would collapse and just say, okay, I'll say we did it just to get this over with. We'll roll over and sign some agreement. They probably never presume that you would fight. When did you decide we are. We are fighting?

So in the things I've learned, I mean, I think you're exactly right. And I have learned during this process that over 98% of people who are accused of a federal crime plead guilty. And many of them might not think they've committed a crime, whether they did or they not did not. But fighting is ridiculously expensive. And there is a. There's a physical and a mental toll, too, that you can't really describe. But my, I mean, my husband, from the minute the FBI showed up, he was going to fight because he does not. Again, he did not even believe he violated his employment contract. And Justin, as you know, interrelated civil litigation, a federal judge just agreed with my husband all these years later. And, you know, my husband and I got married in our early 30s. We both had our careers at the time, and we're both really independent people. And so, you know, he made his decision to fight. You know, not asking me what I thought, but I always. I knew. I know who I married. And I think a big part of this, too, is the, you know, Amazon's main target is this real estate developer named Brian Watson. And if my husband were to, quote, plead guilty or cooperate, even if he didn't do it, but he's like, I'm just going to do this because I can't survive this. It would necessarily involve pointing a finger and saying somebody else committed a crime, and that is not in my husband's constitution, he would not have been able to do that.

Because your husband doesn't lie. So if he were to plead guilty and cooperate against somebody else to help himself, the irony by saying, I accept responsibility, the real tragedy is he would be lying. And that's part of the reason so many people. There are a lot of people who go to trial, lose, and in prison and time in Memorial will reach out to us and say, I kind of understand what I did. I shouldn't have gone to trial. I see the government's version of events, but indeed, there are studies that suggest, and I'm no conspiracy theorist, that there are indeed people in prison who are innocent, who take a plea deal because they don't have the resources and time to fight. As we get into the case, forgive me if I'm wrong, didn't you also relocate from your family to work to earn a living?

Yeah. So, you know, we. So we, you know, we survived through the spring of 2020. And then in July of 2020, Amazon, after they knew the government had seized my husband's bank accounts, which Amazon asked them to do. I think that's really important, and I think that was a. I think that's pretty strange. But after Amazon knew they'd seized our bank accounts, then Amazon sued my husband in civil court. Just a litany of horrors. But after that, you know, I figured out pretty quickly that we needed to sell our house in Seattle to pay lawyers and to survive. We liquidated retirement, we sold our car, and then we went to move in with my husband's family. And then I had a startup that I was working at, and I knew I needed to make more money than I was making at my startup. So I first found an executive job with a big tech company, not Amazon, that paid incredibly well and was fully remote. And that was. I mean, I really felt like I had been able to save my family financially. But on the fifth day of my new job, I got a call and I was being. I was terminated. I was fired because they had read an article about the civil forfeiture of my husband, which, you know, was pretty stunning to me. So then I had to find another new job, and the next new job I found was in New York. And so I had to move away from my family to go earn a living, to pay lawyers and pay for our kids. Because when you're accused of a federal crime, like my husband was working, becomes really challenging. This was very public. And, you know, people really kind of. At the very least, people will say, well, something bad must have happened, you know, and when.

When people see your name versus United States of America and civil or criminal, they presume there's something there. And in this age of social media, people just read it, they believe it. They don't invest the time to learn. So you're always going to have those haters, regardless of what happens. Thankfully, you have so many people in your corner. I'm going to post TikTok videos and so on. I do want to talk about being a mom and. And a wife. I filmed a video last week, a live YouTube video, 11 Ways I Live Differently. Because I went to federal prison, and I have acknowledged I was. When I went to prison, I didn't have children, I wasn't married. So I could, like, sit in my little man cave all day and loathe and blame everyone else but myself. I had no real responsibilities. And in that video, I mentioned how I didn't live with dignity while fighting my case. And in retrospect, I'm so embarrassed by the decisions that I made. In your case, you've chosen to document the journey, which is so inspirational. But I would like to hear about the way you've responded to this and perhaps the legacy you're hoping to show your four little girls about responding to adversity.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think if you follow me on social media, you see a lot of strength. Sometimes I cry, but I'm documenting the journey. But when this first happened, I didn't have that strength. And I really, literally hit on the bathroom floor because I just didn't think I could survive it. And I wasn't the one who was being told they were going to go to prison. I didn't. It wasn't like. It wasn't shame. It was just terror. Like I felt terrified. And it was just. You know, when you're facing something so big, how do you even begin to address it in your own mind? But my mother, who is just an incredible woman and the strongest person I know, FaceTimed me one day after I'd pretty much been hiding for three weeks. And she's told me that I needed to get up. And she said, you don't need to get up just because you're a mom of four little girls. Like, you're a wife. This is your partner. You need to get up and fight, and you need to get up and fight for your own life. But you've got to get up. You literally have to stand up. And once I stood up, I started trying to do small little things to help my husband, to help my kids. But eventually, as I realized this wasn't just going to go away, and it got more and more publicity, I realized that my kids were going to grow up someday and they're going to read about this. And I wanted them to know that we fought and I wanted them to know that we told the truth. I wanted them to know that we tried to use this to change systems, to change things. Because, you know, I think the best lesson I can teach them in life is that terrible things are going to happen, and it's up to you how you deal with it. Right? Like that's the choice that you get.

The lesson that I learned through custody, you don't get it all back at once. When I went to prison, I wanted my reputation, my money, my career. I didn't want my parents to feel pain and shame that their son was in prison. You can't get it all back at one time. It's slowly, it's steadily, it's incrementally. In my case, it was writing for a few minutes a day through a blog, and then it became my first book. In your case, you didn't decide to just tell friends you've been wronged. You chose to tell the whole world. And, Amy, I want to transition into the consequences, both good and bad, that accompany that. So walk us through the creation of your. Your Tick Tock channel. And when you said, I'm, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna bring awareness to this, how did you have the idea to start this Tick Tock channel?

So I didn't say anything, really, to anybody for an entire year, to preface with that, because generally, lawyers tell you not to talk because they don't.

And that's hard. By the way, forgive me for jumping in, because others are now beginning to not just control the narrative, but then they hear something, they put their own spin on it, and then a year later, it's like, it's totally out of control. Let me turn it back over to you.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And it really was for me, it was when I lost that first job I'd gotten, which was in March of 2021, I just. I looked at my husband and I was like, there's going to be a story, right? And right now, the story is not the truth. And I would rather at least take a chance at telling the truth. Maybe nobody will hear me, maybe somebody will, but I just have to say, I have to say something. And we know what the truth is. My husband has said the exact same thing for many years. And so, and I didn't really ask lawyers, I just kind of started doing it. And at the time, I'm an entrepreneur. I had a TikTok or an Instagram following, so I was telling the story there. But, you know, it's really hard to show people who you are by typing things out and to explain what life like this is like without showing them and letting them hear your voice. And it wasn't until December of 2022 that I decided I would start sharing my story on TikTok. And I didn't think anybody would listen, but I wanted to share the story. So I started just filming videos about what we were living through. I had no followers on TikTok. And today, five months later, I have over 100,000 people that are listening and hearing and learning, because that's really important to me, too, that they're learning what this process is. We live in a country where people are often assumed to have done whatever someone says they did.

And, yeah, I want you to know how I found you. I have a good friend named Jesse who found you on TikTok. And he sent you to me and he sent a text that said, I wish I had the courage to fight like her. And it was so inspirational because so many people, I hate to say, acquiesce, but sometimes they truly have no other choice with the unlimited resources and fighting and the process is the punishment. You've heard me say repeatedly going to prison was easier because at least you're getting credit for time served. You and your family have been in prison every day since the FBI showed up at your. Your front door. You are enduring, and I will say a benefit to documenting the journey is even if the outcome doesn't go exactly as you'd like, there's other value because you're helping people. You're putting sharing a legacy for your children. You're showing how to respond to adversity, that if terrible things happen, I can cower and hide or I can. There's value from what you're doing every day. I now want to transition to a TikTok video. I think you put up a few days ago and you put up so many valuable ones in the views and it's spreading like crazy. Someone said something akin to. And you responded like, hey, be careful. Right. The Amazon's powerful. They have a lot of influence be. If they could do this to you, they could. They could hurt you. Is there some fear for your life and the safety of your family? That was a very powerful video.

Yeah. I mean, again, it's 110 years ago I would have said I sound like a conspiracy theorist saying this, but, you know, Amazon very publicly has hired the Pinkerton Agency to surveil union workers. Jeff Bezos has former CIA agents as his personal security and, you know, like big tech has a lot of power in this country. And, yeah, I've been scared for our physical safety. I've been scared a lot. And I will say that part of the reason I decided to speak out was it made me feel safer. It made me feel more secure knowing that people were watching because, you know, anybody can do anything they want to you if they're doing it in the dark and no one is watching. But if you're speaking out and people start to listen, then I think people on the other side are more careful. And when I say on the other side, I'm not talking about the government, I'm talking about Amazon. I want to be really clear about that. And you know, and I know they're watching because they. And I know that it matters to them because they have actually filed motions in federal court about my TikToks. And they silence you.

They want to silence you.

They called me a conspiracy theorist, which I think is utterly sexist and ridiculous. They. And they said they might seek a gag order against me, which they actually couldn't do because I'm not a defendant in their litigation, nor am I in the jurisdiction of the court. It was just a threat. But if what I am saying on TikTok bothers them, I don't think they're in the right.

What I'd love to do as we wrap up this. This video, if you mentioned they're watching, you know, they watch the TikTok videos, they may watch this video. I don't know. I'm not psychic. But if they are watching this video, what. What would you convey to them? What would you like them to know?

What I would like them to know is what they already know. The day the FBI showed up to our house on April 2, 2020, my husband, when he hired a lawyer, the first thing he had them do was call Amazon to try to talk to them directly. Because my husband never had anything to hide. He did his level best for Amazon, and he adhered to the terms of his contract that the federal judge has finally said. And the only thing I could do would be to appeal to Amazon's humanity, to the people that work there. Because it isn't Amazon doing anything. It's people with names. And I would just appeal to their sense of humanity to say there has to be a point where this stops. Like, I know that you face a certain liability for choices that you made, but there are human beings on the other side of this. Like, my name is Amy. My husband's name is Carl. We have four little girls, and we have endured so much. And why can't there just be a conversation?

Can you tell us what's happening to the extent that you can speak openly about it? This has been going on for a while. Waiting is the hardest part. What's next in the case?

Yeah, so, as I said, Amazon sued my husband. And in that case, we were meant to start trial this week after many years of waiting. But a few weeks ago, the federal judge in that case threw out six of Amazon's seven claims against my husband. The judge said my husband hadn't committed racketeering, hadn't committed fraud, and hadn't even reached his employment contract. But there's one remaining claim, which is called tortious interference with business expectancy. So that is now scheduled to go to trial in October. But the judge also strongly advised Amazon and my husband to mediate and try to resolve this out of court. So I think at some point that will happen. But Amazon's main objective is for my husband to be convicted of a felony. So I have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are still urging the DOJ to do that. And my only hope is that the prosecutors can now see reading a federal judge's opinion who's seen all of the evidence and all the back and forth. Maybe the Department of Justice is able to look at this in a different way now, but you just, you do. You wait. This eats years of your life. It's been over three years, and there's just so much uncertainty.

And there's no end date in sight.

No. And, you know, there's not. I think you get used to it to a certain extent. But, like, it's hard not to be able to plan, to hope. It's much harder for my husband than it is for me. And he is. He's a really strong person with a lot of integrity. And I can see the toll this has taken on him. And it's hard.

You, you don't speak a ton about people asking to support you for the legal fees. I made a small contribution. I would like to put a link, but it's a very important message. Can you just put up and I'll put a Link in the YouTube description. What. Where the funds are going, does it go to use it? Go straight to the lawyer and how people can learn more and support you.

I'll preface this with saying, like, I'm making money. My husband is making money. We are, like, somehow managing this. But. But it also helps to have help, but I don't want anybody to ever donate to us that would make it A hardship. But we have a website called Nelson's fight, Amazon.com and there is a way to donate to our legal fund there. The funds go directly to our attorney, Alex Little, with Burr Informan. We don't see any of the money personally. It goes directly to our attorney, which is how we wanted to set it up.

Thank you. I'm going to close this. Amy, I'm so grateful to know you and to be your friend. And I admire the way you've responded to your adversity. I look back to how I responded. I wish I responded like you. And now that I'm a father, when I have issues, I'm trying to respond appropriately. But someday when you're little girl, when your little girls become big girls and they look at this whole library, you've built a whole. You've rewritten the narrative. You have this whole extensive library. A catalog online for them to judge and to learn from you and to see how I wish everyone, whether you're going to prison or not, would do it. You've taken control of your own life and you've chosen to share it with the world. So I just. I really admire you. I just want you to know that.

Thank you very much. I mean, I will say the fact that I had four daughters was the reason that we've been able to handle ourselves with dignity, because we had to. When you're responsible for all these little lies, you just have to find a way.

What I'd love to do now is close this YouTube video with a viral TikTok video you put up yesterday, if that's okay. I'm going to share the screen here. And I love this video. It's so beautiful. I'm gonna play it one. Not touch me

Take me back to.

Take me back to the night we met.

Amy, thank you for being vulnerable, so open and honest, and sharing your story with our community today.

Thanks so much for having me.