Warehouse Supervisor Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison for Stealing Millions of Dollars’ Worth of Fitbits
A federal court has sentenced Dwight Oliver to 15 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a scam where he stole Fitbit devices from his warehouse job.
“Today’s sentence should serve as a strong reminder that the exploitation of online platforms won’t be tolerated,” FBI Indianapolis Acting Special Agent in Charge Danny Youmara said of the sentence. “Theft of merchandise not only disrupts the digital marketplace but undermines the trust consumers place in e-commerce platforms.”
Warehouse Stored Amazon Items
Oliver was employed at a warehouse in Plainfield, Ind., that worked with Amazon to store goods while in transit to fulfillment warehouses. He used his position to steal boxes of Fitbit fitness trackers and then sold them on eBay while posing as a valid third-party merchant.
Between June 2021 and September 2022, while Oliver was tasked with overseeing the transit of bulk orders to Amazon fulfillment centers, he disabled the GPS tracking device on a Sprinter van owned by the warehouse to move the stolen merchandise without tipping off his employer, according to the press release.
Posed as a Trusted eBay Merchant
Investigators found that Oliver then posed as a trusted merchant on eBay to sell the stolen merchandise to unsuspecting buyers. As a result, he brought in $687,540 from those illegal sales. He then used the U.S. Post Office to ship the stolen Fitbits to the buyers on multiple occasions, according to charging documents.
In an attempt to collect on the $687,540 of ill-gotten gains, the government ordered the forfeiture of multiple bank accounts, a Coinbase crypto account, a 1971 Corvette Stingray and a 3,000 square-foot 4-bedroom house in Indianapolis, Ind., according to the court’s judgment.
In addition to the 15-month prison sentence, Oliver was ordered to pay over $1.4 million in restitution to Amazon. Upon release, Oliver will serve one year of supervised release.
Retail Losses Cost Retailers Billions
Experts estimate that retail losses, or “shrinkage,” costs U.S. retailers billions of dollars annually. In 2022, shrinkage clocked in at 1.6%, up from 1.4% in 2021. When compared to the figure of total retail sales in 2022, that represents $112 billion, according to a report from the National Retail Federation. The retail sector contributes $3.9 trillion to the American economy and employs 52 million Americans.
Shrinkage is a measurement of the losses caused by internal and external theft, as well as operational and system errors. Theft alone accounts for 65% of all shrinkage, but that figure may be understated. According to the NRF report, 78% of the participants of the survey do not include e-commerce in their figures, and over half of them do not include supply chain losses or theft.
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