I just got this weird message on WhatsApp.
By Liranhirschkorn · July 29, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
I just got this weird message on WhatsApp.
It's basically the street-level version of a much bigger story: an underground market that sells access to the people inside Amazon.
It started with a guy who sells mattress sheet fasteners out of Staten Island who hit record on a call with a middleman who claimed he could get things done inside Amazon, for a price.
That recording is now part of a U.S. Senate investigation.
According to Bloomberg, brokers on Wechat and Telegram were allegedly selling merchants access to Amazon employees in China. What was reportedly on the menu: a competitor's internal sales numbers, the email addresses behind their reviews, negative reviews made to disappear, and banned accounts quietly brought back to life.
Amazon declined to comment, and this is an allegation under investigation, not a proven fact. The Senate email claiming "compelling evidence" reportedly didn't cite any.
But this is not a historical problem, and I don't need a Senate report to know it's still happening. Last week, out of nowhere, someone messaged me on WhatsApp offering to reinstate suspended Amazon accounts for a fee. Their opening line: "I have partnership with amazon staff."
Set the politics aside, because there's a more useful takeaway for anyone building a real brand on Amazon.
If you have ever watched a worse product outrank you and felt like something was off, you probably weren't imagining all of it. Some sellers have been buying advantages you would never touch. For years that disadvantage was invisible to the people playing fair. Now it's on tape, and in my WhatsApp.
Every one of those bought advantages is fragile. A scrubbed review comes back. A reinstated account gets banned again. A competitor's old sales data tells you what happened last quarter, not how to win the next one. Shortcuts rent you a moment. They don't build anything.
What compounds is the boring stuff. Real reviews from real buyers. A listing that converts because it actually answers the question. Ad spend that gets cheaper to run because the fundamentals underneath it are strong. None of that is for sale on Telegram, and none of it disappears when the platform cleans house.
If you found out a competitor had been buying their way up the rankings, would it change how you run your own brand?