G. Martinez

When you’re a mega company and makes millions’ or in some case, billions of dollars a year, you need to have trust and faith in your employees. Regrettably Amazon had given both faith and trust into the wrong person. In August 2020, Kayricka Wortham began working as an operations manager, a role that gave her the authority to approve new vendors and handle vendor payments. , unfortunately Wortham took advantage of her position and engaged in fraudulent activities by creating fake vendor information. She has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for stealing more than $9.4 million from Amazon.com. Seven individuals, including Wortham, have now been charged in connection with the scheme.

Kayricka created fake vendors and submitted more than $10 million in fictitious invoices for those vendors, causing Amazon to transfer approximately $9.4 million to bank accounts controlled by her and her co-conspirators. Two of her partners are Brittany Hudson, 37, who owned one of the DSPs that contracted with the warehouse, and Demetrius Hines, 35, a loss prevention lead at multiple warehouses around Georgia, including Wortham’s.

Wortham must pay back the amount of $9,469,731.45 to Amazon, and the government will seize a total of $2,792,607.82 from her various bank accounts, her Georgia real estate property worth almost $1 million, a Lamborghini, a Dodge Durango, a Tesla Model X, a Porsche, and a Kawasaki motorcycle, all of which she allegedly purchased with the illegal proceeds. Now mind you, she will be serving prisons time for up to 16 years. I’m now sure how or if she would be able to pay back those funds.

After Ms. Wortham left Amazon in March 2022, one might have thought she would have stopped her scheming ways. However, the scheme continued, prosecutors said.

As reported by AL.com, in January, while out on bond, both Ms. Wortham and Ms. Hudson were working with a franchising company to try to open a hookah lounge, according to prosecutors. When the company asked them about the charges related to the Amazon case, Ms. Wortham and Ms. Hudson sent the company forged court documents indicating that charges had been dismissed in the case, according to prosecutors. Their bonds were revoked after the authorities learned about the forgery.

This should be a hard lesson learned for Kayricka and her partners, as well as for others who may think this is the way to go.