Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has announced that the FORCE Team has charged Ali F. Habash, 28, and Ahmed Al-Bahia, 22, both of Canton, for allegedly defrauding Amazon of more than $50,000. The defendants were arraigned in the 35th District Court in Plymouth, Al-Bahia on July 24th and Habash on July 29th.
Habash faces (PDF) six counts of False Pretenses: $1,000 or More but Less Than $20,000, one count of Uttering and Publishing, one count of Forgery, and one count of Continuing a Criminal Enterprise, a 20-year felony. Al-Bahia has been charged (PDF) with one count of False Pretenses: $1,000 or More but Less Than $20,000.
The Department was contacted by Amazon’s internal investigations division in February after the company identified 32 accounts allegedly engaging in retail fraud and each controlled or linked to Habash. He is accused of using these accounts on six occasions between 2020 and 2023 to place orders for high-value products, including Apple brand laptops and gold coins, and fraudulently requesting refunds while keeping the merchandise to re-sell for a profit. The alleged scheme involved requesting return authorization and either shipping materially different items of lesser value or failing to ship anything whatsoever back to Amazon. Habash and Al-Bahia worked together on another instance of alleged fraud in 2021 that resulted in thousands of dollars in losses to Amazon, according to the online retailer and the investigation by the Attorney General’s FORCE Team.
“This case involves both massive sums of money and an online retailer familiar to all Michigan consumers,” said Nessel. “Refund process manipulation, resulting in effectively freely obtained merchandise to be re-sold for a profit, is no less a crime than physical push-out thefts or simple shoplifting. I appreciate Amazon’s cooperation in identifying this scheme and working with us to hold these individuals accountable. The FORCE Team's commitment and abilities in bringing justice to retail fraudsters is equally relentless in both brick-and-mortar and online sales forums.”
“Large-scale refund fraud is a form of organized retail crime (ORC) that Amazon and many retailers have faced for years and results in significant industry-wide losses. Amazon addresses this issue head-on through the development of tools that use machine learning models to proactively detect and prevent fraud, as well as employing specialized teams dedicated to detecting, investigating and stopping fraud,” said Kathy Sheehan, Amazon VP of Business Conduct & Ethics. “When bad actors attempt to evade our controls, we take action and work with law enforcement to hold them accountable. Amazon referred this case to the Michigan Department of Attorney General, provided evidence and supported this investigation. We are grateful for the Attorney General’s collaboration and believe these charges send a strong message that participating in fraudulent refund schemes has severe consequences.”
Habash will next appear in the 35th District Court in Plymouth for a Probable Cause Conference on August 9th. Al-Bahia is set to appear before the same Court on August 2nd.
The FORCE Team and the Organized Retail Crime Unit were established in January 2023 by the Attorney General to target criminal organizations that steal products from retailers to repackage and sell for a profit. Two assistant attorneys general serve the FORCE Team full-time, working with special agents within the Department of Attorney General and with Michigan State Police detectives to investigate and prosecute these crimes. The unit also partners with the FBI’s Detroit Fraud and Financial Crimes Task Force and the Postal Inspection Service. This is a first-in-the-nation unit, unique in the 50 states as being the first such unit with embedded, dedicated staff from the Department of Attorney General.
The FORCE Team is dedicated to working collaboratively with retailers and local law enforcement agencies to combat organized retail crime. FORCE is an acronym that stands for Focused Organized Retail Crime Enforcement. Recent corporate partners on investigations have included Sam’s Club/Walmart, Meijer, Target, Home Depot, TJ Maxx, Rite-Aid, Lululemon, Ulta Beauty, and Lowe’s.
Local law enforcement agencies or retailers with evidence of organized retail fraud are encouraged to email the FORCE Team.
Original source can be found here.