Story Archive

It’s a Gift

“I saw an opportunity to make my life better,” says Thomas Scott Taylor of Lexington, Ky. He was paid a salary of $128,000 per year as the Senior Director of an online survey company, which promised people Amazon gift cards for answering questions. The “opportunity” Taylor saw was, he noticed a lot of people didn’t actually cash in their gift cards. So Taylor pulled the numbers and security codes out of the company’s data base and applied them to his own Amazon account. He bought a house, funded his retirement account, and had bulging bank balances when he was caught. As part of a plea bargain, Taylor, 38, pleaded guilty to one count of “exceeding authorized access of a protected computer,” and has agreed to pay restitution of nearly a half-million dollars; he’ll be sentenced later, and faces fines and up to 5 years in prison. (RC/Lexington Herald Leader) ...Just another member of Amazon Crime.