Atlanta woman sentenced to 16 years for fraud scheme that stole nearly $10 million from Amazon
An Atlanta woman has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison as part of a fraud scheme that stole nearly $10 million from Amazon, prosecutors say.
According to officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, 40-year-old Brittany Hudson and the woman with whom she was in a romantic relationship used fake vendors and invoices to steal the money.
Officials say Hudson owned a business that contracted with Amazon and was in a relationship with Kayricka Wortham, who worked as an operations manager at the company's warehouse in Smyrna.
From around January to June 2022, the couple tricked unknowing subordinates into adding fake vendors to the company's system, authorities said. They then sent in forged invoices that showed the fake vendors had provided Amazon with various goods and services. In her position, Wortham approved the invoices, transferring $9.4 million to bank accounts the couple and other co-conspirators owned.
Hudson and Wortham used the money to buy a nearly $1 million home in Smyrna, a 2019 Lamborghini Urus, a 2021 Dodge Durango, a 2022 Tesla Model X, a 2018 Porsche Panamera, a Kawasaki ZX636 motorcycle, and other purchases.
In September 2022, federal authorities charged Hudson and Wortham as part of an investigation into the fraud scheme. Prosecutors say they then lied to potential business partners that the charges had been dismissed, and provided them with fake court documents to prove their statements, as well as forged bank statements.
A jury convicted Hudson in March on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 17 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, nine counts of money laundering, and one count of forgery of the signature of a federal judge. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced her to 16 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. She has also been ordered to pay nearly $9.5 million in restitution.
"Hudson and her partner engineered a massive fraud scheme against Amazon, stealing nearly $10 million in just a few months," said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. "Hudson then showed utter contempt for the law by forging a federal judge's signature in a failed effort to defraud another company while out on bond. Today's significant sentence, which must be served without the possibility of parole, holds her accountable for her crime spree."
Wortham was sentenced in 2023 to the same amount of time as Hudson.
