Business Insider’s Emily Stewart spoke to multiple people who have confessed to stealing from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ companies out of spite.
Stewart released a report on Thursday, headlined, “The rise of the anti-Amazon avengers,” documenting how numerous people are engaged in stealing from Bezos’ companies. She described the mentality of such thieves as “some sort of Robin Hood-esque endeavor where they take from the rich to give to the poor, the comparatively poor being themselves.”
Stewart reported these shoplifters are motivated beyond mere economic woes, often citing grievances against Bezos himself, ranging from his business practices to his recent political shifts in regard to President Donald Trump and the Washington Post.
Bezos sparked a massive controversy within the Washington Post, which he also owns, when he refused to have it endorse a candidate during the height of the 2024 election. After President Trump won the election, Bezos sat down with the then-president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in December. In February, Bezos announced major changes to The Post’s opinion page, declaring there will be greater emphasis on “personal liberties and free markets.”
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Stewart spoke to nearly a dozen “shoplifters and ethically (and legally) compromised individuals,” to whom she gave pseudonyms, about why they chose to steal from Bezos’ companies.
A 20-something communications professional living in the Washington, D.C., area quipped to the reporter that he is engaged in “grand theft auto-ing” from his local Whole Foods store.
“If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too,” he said.
Stewart summarized that these thefts include small infractions like how he would “cheat the scale at the hot bar, pocket spices, or take home four lemons in the self-checkout aisle while only declaring two.” She also added that when this young man, “Lee,” confessed these misdeeds to his mother, he persuaded her by citing “Amazon’s market power, Bezos’ wealth, what the billionaire has done at The Washington Post.”
This is one of many thieves arguing their theft is a political act.
“I never felt bad for the corporation as a whole, because it was Amazon and, you know, it was Jeff Bezos,” one person pseudo-named “Jesse” told the reporter. “He just profits so much taking advantage of the little people, so if we as little people can bite back a little bit, and that’s me taking $100 maybe out of revenue for him, that’s a little bit of a middle finger.”
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A 30-something pseudo-named “Carson” from the nonprofit sector told Stewart that “he likes slipping salmon lox into his laptop sleeve and estimates he saves about $1,000 in groceries a year by shoplifting, largely from Whole Foods.”
“It’s easy to look at him like a Lex Luthor,” Carson told her, referring to the bald Superman villain. “Who’s actually hurt in this strange, dehumanized system?”
The reporter also noted that “Carson” is targeting Amazon as well, in that “he’ll buy $1,000 of decorations from Amazon, use them, and then return them.”
Another thief compared himself to Batman.
A 30-something government worker pseudo-named “Jimmy” told Stewart that he is “indifferent” toward Bezos, and said that he isn’t losing sleep over replacing his broken video game controller with one he bought from Amazon, sending the broken one back in the new one’s box as a return to get his money back.
“We know how much money that company makes. They’re not going to be worried about that $70,” he said. “I feel like the Batman of returns. I choose my targets.”
But Stewart argued that such actions are not only unproductive, but bad for society.
“None of what they’re doing is actually making the type of impact they might like to see, and they’re conveniently ignoring Bezos’ positive contributions, such as his philanthropy. And they could be causing unintended harm to the non-Bezoses of the world, as in, everyone else. Many retailers have put items behind glass cases to combat theft, which is a headache for everybody,” she said. “Shoplifting can demoralize workers, and if enough people do it, it may lead companies to raise prices, or in the case of return fraud, mean businesses make sending unwanted items back a lot harder.”
However, at the end of her piece she concluded, “At least it’s better than setting Teslas on fire.”
Amazon and Whole Foods didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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