To further underline your point, if the chain is (thief)→(amazon)→(end user) then the fence isn't "anyone with an Amazon" account: the fence is amazon.
More likely this stuff is sold on ebay
I have doubts about this.
It does link to Amazon's seller central but I don't have an account to see the actual list.
Source: I have a seller account on Amazon.
But it could be that maybe one of them is a legit seller/vendor and buys these stolen goods off of these crooks or doesnt even know about the fact that they are stolen.
There are lots of Facebook groups for amazon sellers where people often post “liquidation” sales so maybe this could be a way to do it.
I sure hope so.
Amazon seems to only carry many common household items through dubious 3rd party sellers.
On the subject of deodorant, I've received the wrong type from Amazon multiple times, including some that obviously came from a foreign market. I ordered Dove. That can't be difficult to source from the manufacturer.
I just want Target to bring back Subscribe and Save so I can ditch Amazon completely. Third party fulfillment ruined Amazon's store.
A fence is providing a few semiseparate services:
1. They will buy stolen goods. You get a lower price, but you don't have to face nasty questions like "how did you get this?"
2. They may assume the risk of policing. If you stole something surprisingly important and it gets thoroughly investigated, the fence goes to jail, and you don't.
3. They locate people who want to buy stolen goods. It's easy to conceive of this as a service they provide for their own benefit, after buying your stuff (#1), but in reality you can't really do either without the other one.
Amazon commingling inventory lets it provide service #2. The police can establish that a stolen object was delivered to an Amazon customer, but if it came from a commingled pool, they can't establish who sold it.
But Amazon's whole concept is to provide service(s) 1 and 3. This would make it fairly strongly parallel to a fence who, when the police show up, lets them know where to find you. But even then Amazon is still doing the largest part of fencing; usually the police don't show up. The hard part is locating the customers, and that's what Amazon does.
At least it's Amazon losing money then rather than Amazon benefiting from crime against competitors.
Same as if stripe, google ads and shopify were used.
They don’t take possession of the items at any time. Even if they warehouse has them, they are in the same boat as uhaul or a storage company.