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Fri Dec 19 2025 22:34:22

Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft

By: Ina Steiner

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FBA sellers who are denied claims when their inventory goes missing at Amazon warehouses pointed to a recent news story as proof that inventory can vanish on Amazon's end, despite what may feel like perpetual denials of missing-inventory claims.

Police near Toronto, Ontario arrested five people after working with Amazon Loss Prevention on a theft and fraud investigation. The Durham Regional Police Service issued a news release on Wednesday and wrote, "Three males and two females are facing charges after a $2 million Amazon theft and fraud investigation in Ajax."

Amazon Loss Prevention contacted the police investigators alleging that two of their employees were responsible for the theft of merchandise over a 2-year period.

The police alleged in Wednesday's statement: "On Monday, December 15, 2025, as a result of a collaborative investigation involving the Amazon Loss Prevention Team, investigators from the FCU took two employees into custody before executing a search warrant at a residence in Scarborough. Three additional suspects were located and taken into custody during the search warrant.  As a result, police seized over $250,000 in high-end electronics and $50,000 in Canadian Currency."

According to MyAmazonGuy.com, the warehouse located in Ajax on 789 Salem Rd. goes by the Amazon Fulfillment Center code YOO1.

Someone reacting to an article about the arrests said sellers should show it to Amazon customer service reps when their FBA inventory goes missing on the way to the warehouse. "Save this article off as a pdf the next time Amazon wants to claim that you did not ship the quantity that you know you did ship," they posted on the SellersAskSellers.com discussion boards.

An example of a seller frustrated by Amazon's response to their claim is found in this thread on the Amazon discussion boards. The seller said Amazon claimed it received only 33 items in a box that was sent containing 100 items and wrote, "Because Amazon registered half of them, we pretend the other half magically disappeared?"

Obviously most sellers would not be pleased to hear of thefts from Amazon warehouses where their inventory is stored, but the story validated their contention that it does happen despite Amazon denials of their claims.



Comments (4) | Permalink

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Perminate Link for Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft   Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft

This user has validated their user name. by: RKTOYS

Sun Dec 21 17:06:06 2025

Amazon is every bit as bad as eBay if not worse.

Perminate Link for Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft   Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft

by: NYSteve This user has validated their user name.

Mon Dec 22 12:18:34 2025

two worst 'deals' for sellers on an already stacked marketplace megolith against them:
1. paid promotions
2. FBA

..and the larger the marketplace/platform, the bigger and 'better' the 'deal'  (rolled eyes)

Perminate Link for Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft   Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft

by: AMogul This user has validated their user name.

Mon Dec 22 18:29:26 2025

I revisited FBA after a 7 year hiatus, this past quarter. It was fairly disastrous. Boxes would get checked in and would sit in a delivered status for several weeks. Inventory would mysteriously disappear. Stuff that I know was in the boxes. In one case they received 80 units of an item that we only sent six units of in. We were missing 74 units of approximately 10 to 15 other skus. When we tried to get Amazon to investigate, they wanted proof of purchase. Yeah right. Anyone who has ever read the “Everything Store” knows how cut throat Amazon is. I am not sending them any confidential vendor info. Instead of fighting them on the error I did a removal order and sure enough they sent me 80 units back. The majority of those units had inventory stickers from other sellers. So Amazon essentially robbed Peter to pay Paul. I am going to continue sending some obsolete inventory into the system. It is lucrative, yet slow selling stuff that we have very little cost in and have literally thousands of. It’s old PC game video inventory that has a cult following. Our primary inventory which also has somewhat lucrative margins is no longer going to fba. We don’t have access to unlimited supplies of that stuff. I can’t wait to retire from these platforms. I am hanging on for another few years. I started in 1997.  

Perminate Link for Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft   Why Seller Heralded News of Amazon Warehouse Theft

by: etectra This user has validated their user name.

Sat Dec 27 17:46:09 2025

eBay shipping hubs as well as private freight forwarders can also steal items and guess who will be blamed for that? You will be. Shipping to these locations does not provide any protections at all as the buyer is free to run any number of scams through their credit card, bank or payment processor that override eBay.



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