NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A former Amazon employee was arrested outside of his Brooklyn home Tuesday morning for the theft of nearly 2,000 work boots and sneakers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Asraf Mohamed, 33, was charged with grand larceny and possession of stolen property.
Mohamed worked at an Amazon facility on Grand Avenue in Maspeth from July 2020 to September 2023, when he was terminated. In his role, he was responsible for training new drivers and had access to a national database of new employees, Queens District Attorney Katz said.
Mohamed allegedly created accounts in the names of new employees without their knowledge and obtained the shoes, later reselling them online.
Between November 12, 2022, and June 9, 2023, Mohamed allegedly created 1,838 unique accounts for Zappos at Work through Zappos.com, an Amazon subsidiary,
The program was designed to provide workers with a free pair of work boots or sneakers to be worn on the job.
A total of 79 shoe orders were delivered to Mohamed’s residential address and another 1,759 orders were delivered to his brother’s address in Queens.
Mohamed allegedly sold the shoes from footwear brands that included Timberland, Dr. Martens, Wolverine, Carhartt, New Balance and Brooks and had a total retail value of $224,834, on eBay.
Mohamed is set to return to court Sept. 16. If convicted of the top count, he faces a maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
Katz said: “As alleged, this defendant took advantage of his position at Amazon to gather information on fellow workers, compromising their safety to line his own pockets to the tune of $224,000. Retail theft, whether against mom-and-pop shops or large corporations, hurts all consumers as it causes prices to rise."