Ex-Amazon contractor gets 16 years in prison in $10M Atlanta fraud

A former Amazon contractor found guilty of stealing almost $10 million from the retail and tech giant in an Atlanta scheme involving a company manager and other staff was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in federal prison.

Brittany Hudson, 40, was also ordered to pay $9.4 million in restitution and forfeit millions of dollars worth of assets.

“Ms. Hudson is a dishonest and deceptive person,” U.S. District Judge Michael Brown said in court.

Hudson was convicted of 30 federal charges, including fraud, money laundering and forgery, at the end of a jury trial in federal court in Atlanta earlier this year. She’s been in federal custody since early 2023.

Federal prosecutors said Hudson and her then-girlfriend, Kayricka Wortham, were the ringleaders of a fake invoicing scheme in which Amazon paid around $9.4 million of the $10.6 million they falsely claimed in the first half of 2022. At the time, Wortham worked as an operations manager at an Amazon warehouse in Smyrna.

“They are a two-headed snake,” prosecutor Stephen McClain said Wednesday of the former couple.

Wortham, 35, was sentenced in 2023 to 16 years in prison after she and several others prosecuted in relation to the fraud took plea deals. Wortham was ordered to pay $9.4 million in restitution to Amazon. More than $3 million in cash seized from 11 bank accounts was forfeited in her case, along with several luxury vehicles.

Hudson is the only defendant who went to trial. She chose to represent herself in the case, rejecting court-appointed defense counsel.

In court Wednesday, Hudson downplayed her involvement in the scheme, denying that she was a leader like Wortham.

“There’s no proof to substantiate that I knew about the number of vendors, how many were approved, the number of names that were used,” she said.

Prosecutors had asked that Hudson be sentenced to 21 years in prison. They said she recruited one of her cousins for the scheme in which she also used her father’s name and her mother’s bank account. In addition, the stolen personal information of at least 20 individuals was bought through the dark web by other defendants and used to create fake vendors, prosecutors said.

They said Hudson and Wortham used Amazon’s money to buy a $1 million home in Cobb County with cash, a $300,000 Lamborghini, a $100,000 Tesla, other vehicles and various designer items, among other things. Wortham texted Hudson about scamming Amazon out of more money for an in-ground pool, case records show.

U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg said Hudson showed “utter contempt for the law.” He called the fraud “massive.”

“Today’s significant sentence, which must be served without the possibility of parole, holds her accountable for her crime spree,” Hertzberg said.

The couple recruited several of Amazon’s Atlanta-area employees and others to create more than 30 fake companies, using stolen personal information, that Wortham approved as Amazon vendors, prosecutors said.

Hudson owned a business called Legend Express LLC that contracted with Amazon to deliver packages, according to her indictment.

McClain said Hudson was an equal partner in the crime with Wortham, and the one that directed how some of the stolen money was used.

“She was the one that wanted a Lamborghini,” he said of Hudson.

Just before Hudson’s trial, a representative for Amazon said the company had cooperated fully with law enforcement and would not comment further.