Even though it may not be a crime (especially seeing as the DOJ complete failed to bring a case against them!) I can see why Amazon may have thought they were a

Even though it may not be a crime (especially seeing as the DOJ complete failed to bring a case against them!) I can see why Amazon may have thought they were a victim of a crime and tried to get the employees involved prosecuted. There was a similar story on hackernews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41088475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41088475) about an Army insider who was abusing her position to redirect grant funds to her self (https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/07/24/janet-yamanaka-mello-texas-army-fraud-case-sentencing/74535623007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/07/24/janet-y...). Now obviously what she did was significantly worse than what the Amazon employees were accused of because the grants were completely bogus whereas Amazon received what they were paid for and according to the Twitter thread Amazon were also unable to show they were worse off because of the employees actions. I'm not sure what the lesson here is. Obviously, if you are going to do these insider scams then don't do what the Army lady did because then when you are caught you do not have a defence. On the other hand you should be very careful to make sure your legitimate business doesn't look like an insider scam because the DOJ will come after you thinking you committed an insider scam and even if you successfully defend yourself you will be massively out of pocket. Just to add it also looks like Neumann from WeWork (https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-conflict-interest-related-party-transactions-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-conflict-interest-rel...) was doing insider dealing very similar to what the defendants were accused of doing and I don't think Neumann was ever charged by the DOJ so I can see why the defendants might feel they have been unfairly targeted by the DOJ.