The Woman Who Took On Amazon

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Hidden Third
Episode: The Woman Who Took On Amazon
Host: Mariana van Zeller | Guest: Amy Nelson
Release Date: February 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Mariana van Zeller sits down with Amy Nelson–lawyer, entrepreneur, and mother of four–to unravel her extraordinary six-year battle against Amazon and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). After Amy’s husband, Carl Nelson, was accused of a crime by his former employer Amazon, the couple’s assets were seized, their reputations destroyed, and their livelihoods upended. Amy details her journey from a thriving startup founder to a TikTok whistleblower, ultimately winning a major federal ruling. Together, Mariana and Amy delve into the dark intersections of corporate power, federal law enforcement, and the devastating human toll exacted on everyday families.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Amy’s Background and the Birth of The Riveter

• [02:25–05:15] Amy shares her path from practicing law to launching The Riveter: a women-focused co-working startup inspired by Rosie the Riveter. She grew the business rapidly to 150 employees across 10 spaces in six states, all while raising four young daughters.
  • Notable Quote:
    • "I wanted to do something I felt passionate about...to say I’m going to do something else and something a lot riskier, where I could fail very easily, that was hard." – Amy Nelson [04:18]

2. Carl Nelson’s Work at Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• [05:18–07:43] Amy explains Carl’s career building AWS data centers—the hidden financial engine powering not just Amazon, but much of the internet and U.S. government agencies.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • "Amazon builds data centers that house the cloud, the Internet...Amazon has this leverage, right, over the government. It’s a very, very close relationship." – Amy Nelson [07:43]
    • "There’s a revolving door between people who work at these companies and in the government. It’s pretty shocking." – Amy Nelson [08:31]

3. The FBI Raid and Federal Accusations

• [09:56–15:07] Amy recounts the morning in April 2020 when the FBI knocked on their door, investigating Carl for "private sector honest services fraud" (a novel charge) related to his Amazon employment contract. They were issued a target letter and notified of impending asset seizures.
  • Notable Quote:
    • "Once you’re in their crosshairs, they won’t let go. And I just thought, my husband’s gonna go to prison and he hasn’t committed a crime." – Amy Nelson [25:02]

4. Civil Asset Forfeiture & Crushing Financial Pressure

• [17:40–21:18] Without a formal charge or trial, the DOJ completely emptied the Nelson family’s bank accounts under civil forfeiture; funds sent to lawyers and Amy’s (unaccused) accounts were also seized. Even Amy’s terminally ill father’s assets were taken over financial ties to the family.
  • "The government can seize your assets on the suspicion they’re tied to a crime…the DOJ emptied every single bank account we had." – Amy Nelson [17:40]
  • "I looked through the docket...and could not find a single instance similar to what they’d done to our family." – Amy Nelson [21:18]

5. Emotional, Social & Family Fallout

• [25:02–28:17] Amy describes the psychological trauma, social ostracization, and familial upheaval that followed. Friends abandoned them, and they eventually sold their home, moving from Seattle to California, then Honolulu, then Ohio—house-hopping with four daughters in tow.

6. Legal Machinations & Amazon’s Motives

• [36:00–47:58] Details emerge implicating Amazon in using the federal criminal case as leverage for a high-stakes contractual dispute, needing a felony conviction to exit $500 million in obligations to a data center partner. Coordination between Amazon’s lawyers and DOJ prosecutors is exposed through emails and civil discovery.
  • "The level of partnership...is stunning. The FBI were giving Amazon lawyers updates, hourly, about our case." – Amy Nelson [41:32]
  • "Not only do billionaires exist by a separate set of rules, but people with access and relationships live by a separate set of rules." – Amy Nelson [50:37]

7. Going Public: Amy’s Social Media Battle

• [60:21–66:23] After losing a lucrative job due to association with the case, Amy turns to TikTok to document their story, gaining over 250,000 followers and galvanizing public outrage.
  • Notable Quote:
    • "If I can’t work, then I’m going to say everything I need to say...every lawyer said don’t, but Alex said, ‘we’re not afraid of the facts, go share them.’" – Amy Nelson [62:36]
    • "I put the [Amazon cease and desist] letter on TikTok...bullies only know how to bully." – Amy Nelson [63:47]

8. Major Legal Turning Points & DOJ Reversal

• [70:23–73:57] After Amazon’s civil case collapses—a judge rules Carl did not violate his contract—the DOJ shocks observers by vacating four previously secured guilty pleas related to the case.
  • "The DOJ did something absolutely extraordinary...they vacated four guilty pleas. It does not happen." – Amy Nelson [72:37]
  • "Somebody came to you and they lied...who on that side will be going to prison? No one." – Amy Nelson [73:57]

9. Why This Story Stays Underground

• [75:20–88:08] Amy discusses her struggles to get mainstream media coverage and book deals, hindered by Amazon’s advertising power and the risk-averse nature of legacy news.
  • "Amazon’s power over everything in this country is truly stunning...Amazon is the largest buyer of ads in the media around the world." – Amy Nelson [75:20]
  • "My friend at the New York Times...my editor would never let me tell this story because it supports Trump's narrative. But it’s the truth." – Amy Nelson [87:19]

10. Civil Forfeiture & Calls for Legal Reform

• [92:09–96:36] Amy identifies civil asset forfeiture as a particularly egregious legal loophole, disproportionately harming the vulnerable. She advocates reform—beginning with more state-level, less politicized criminal law, and the abolition of civil forfeiture.
  • "We have a system of pleas where almost everybody pleads guilty. And because of this I think the FBI and federal prosecutors break the rules...every day." – Amy Nelson [92:15]
  • "If they can do this to you guys, they can do this to anyone." – Mariana van Zeller [88:20]

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On DA's ‘partnership’ with Amazon:
  "We’ve hand-selected our two best prosecutors for you and Amazon’s important matter..." – Amazon’s lawyer via DOJ email [42:04]
• On personal resolve:
  "My husband said something to me...I’ve accepted the worst possible outcome. You need to accept it too. And then we both need to do everything we possibly can to make it not happen." – Amy Nelson [31:30]
• On being public as protection:
  "There is a lot of protection in being incredibly public and that, you know, it’s like you could think, okay, they sent me a cease and desist letter, but they didn’t act on it because what would happen?" – Amy Nelson [65:54]
• On broken justice:
  "How many people have been through this and been destroyed? That’s not justice." – Amy Nelson [50:45]
• On fighting for reform:
  "The impact of civil forfeiture is extraordinary...if they pulled you over and you had a dime bag of weed, they could take your entire car." – Amy Nelson [93:30]

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Important Timestamps

• Amy’s Career Pivot: [02:33–04:23]
• AWS Role in National Security: [05:18–07:43]
• FBI Knock & Target Letter: [09:56–15:07]
• Asset Seizure Details: [17:40–21:18]
• Selling House & Moving: [54:50–58:29]
• Amazon’s Motive for Federal Case: [36:00–47:58]
• DOJ–Amazon Email Revelations: [41:29–44:46]
• Going Public on TikTok: [60:21–66:23]
• DOJ Vacates Guilty Pleas: [70:23–73:57]
• Barriers to Media Coverage: [75:20–88:08]
• Amy’s Legal Reform Vision: [92:09–96:36]

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Closing Thoughts

Amy’s story is a rare window into the power wielded by mega-corporations, the frailties of federal justice, and the resilience of an ordinary family fighting for justice. Despite staggering financial loss, personal trauma, and ongoing litigation, Amy’s fearless advocacy has made her a champion for legal reform and a lifeline for others caught in the system’s crosshairs.

For more, follow Amy Nelson on TikTok or check for updates on her forthcoming self-published book.

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Related:

• Follow The Hidden Third for more true stories from the world’s hidden economies.
• Support justice reform by learning more about civil forfeiture and federal prosecutorial discretion.

Transcript

[Theo Vaughn]

Hey, everybody, it's Theo Vaughn here and I got a question. When it comes to soda, are you really picking a zero sugar cola that you actually prefer or are you just settling for what you've always had? That's the question. And I'll say this. When it comes to taste, I find that nothing beats Pepsi Zero Sugar. But you don't just have to take my word for it. That would be ridiculous. Pepsi has been doing blind taste tests for years. No labels, no brand names, just taste. And last year, they brought back the Pepsi Challenge and the results were clear. 66% of people agreed and said that Pepsi Zero Sugar tastes better than Coca Cola Zero Sugar. In fact, Pepsi Zero Sugar won in every market they tested. So if you're grabbing a zero sugar soda, go with the one people keep choosing. When taste is the only thing that matters, go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. Let your taste decide.

[Amy Nelson]

My biggest issue with all of this is we say we have one rule of law, but we don't. We see it every day. And not only do billionaires exist by a separate set of rules, as we see, I think that people with access and relationships live by a separate set of rules. And when you don't know what the rules are, how can you play the game? Right? Like, that's the terrifying part to me. Like, my husband did everything right and our lives were annihilated.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

My guest today is Amy Nelson, a lawyer and an entrepreneur and mother of four whose family has spent the last six years in a legal battle, a battle that most people would never believe if it weren't actually happening. After her husband Carl was accused of a crime by Amazon, their accounts and savings were seized. They lost their home, their livelihood, their lives as they knew them. What followed was a David versus Goliath fight against one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, Amazon. Amy took her family's fight to TikTok, rallied millions behind her, and recently won a major ruling in federal courts. Amy Nelson, welcome to the Hidden Third.

[Amy Nelson]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Have you here? I wrote this little intro and realized that I didn't write Amazon there. So I thought I'd let people know. What's the corporation we're going to be talking with about today?

[Amy Nelson]

It is one that everyone knows. Yeah, it is indeed.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay, so tell me what. So you're a lawyer?

[Amy Nelson]

I am. I practice law for a decade. Financial services, litigation and First Amendment litigation.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And then why did you stop practicing law?

[Amy Nelson]

I stopped practicing law because I reprioritized my time. It's an Interesting thing to say, but I had two little girls and I was working at the time in house, and my employer required that I be at my desk, you know, 9:30 to 5:30, which now, like no one is required to do.

[Theo Vaughn]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

Pandemic. And they wouldn't accept kind of any alternative. And I needed to create space in my life to see my babies. They're both under 2 years old. And so I thought I would go out and practice on my own. But I started taking classes on how to start a business. And all of those classes were at WeWork locations, so kegs and ping pong tables and men, there were rooms full of men. And I kept reading that women were starting businesses at a rate five times that of men. And I couldn't find them. And so then I decided instead of starting my own legal practice, I would start sort of like a wework for women to bring women together who are building businesses.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Was it hard to make a decision to stop working at the law firm? I imagine it was. I mean, you were doing in many ways what you wanted to do. But that as a mother myself, I'm asking.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

When was it decided that you were the one? Or did you have a conversation with your husband about one of you guys should spend more time with the judge?

[Amy Nelson]

Well, it wasn't even that. Well, to be fair, I told my husband, I was like, well, maybe I should take a career break. And my husband kind of laughed, like you, you are not someone who can take a career break. Like your brain, your energy, you won't be able to do it. And I agreed with him when I thought about it for a few seconds. But you know, I think one of the things that happened when I became a mother is that I wanted to fill something, I wanted to do something that I felt more passionate about. And at the time, I wasn't that passionate about corporate law. But it was really hard to give up that piece of my identity. I was a lawyer. I thought I would always be a lawyer. And to say I'm going to do something else and something a lot riskier, where I could fail very easily, that was hard.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So then, so then you left law and then you started your own company, the Riveter, which is called the Riveter because.

[Amy Nelson]

Because of Rosie the Riveter from World War II. So, you know, really was. World War II was the first time women in America were called to work in the traditional workplaces to go build the machines of war. And we did. And the government responded by giving us federally subsidized Childcare. So when they say they can't do that, they can. But yeah, it was an incredible experience. I grew it from an idea to 150 employees in two and a half years.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That is incredible.

[Amy Nelson]

Wow.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And this. And it was everywhere. It was sort of a We work space for women. Right. And it was all over the country.

[Amy Nelson]

We had 10 spaces in six states and we were just, we were growing incredibly fast. And I had two more baby girls during that time, so four if you're counting. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a. It was an incredible time. And that was in between 2017, right up until the pandemic.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And meanwhile, your husband is also having a great career.

[Amy Nelson]

He is, he was at Amazon Web Services, which is, I think now more people know it. But when he joined in 2012, really no one knew what the subsidiary of Amazon was. But it is their moneymaker and it is where the Internet lives. Amazon builds data centers that house the cloud, the Internet. And so my husband's expertise was in industrial real estate. And so he was Amazon's second real estate hire to build data centers. And so he did that for seven years. And then in 2019 he left and went out on his own to develop land and work with all sorts of different hyperscalers beyond Amazon, Meta, Oracle, everyone who needs data center space. And he was having incredible success.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I heard you say this once, which I had no idea and it blew my mind. But the idea that Amazon actually makes more money from these data centers, way more money than they do from their retail.

[Amy Nelson]

Way more money. It's really interesting. Like if you look at Amazon stock price too, Amazon stock price really shot up in 2014. And that was about six months after Amazon Web Services was awarded its first big government contract for the cloud. And that was with the CIA. It was a $600 million contract. And that really opened the door to billions of dollars in contracts. The FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the DOJ, DoD run largely on Amazon Web Services.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Really. It's the biggest. It's the biggest company that they biggest now.

[Amy Nelson]

And they've diversified some. The government has diversified some in recent years. So Oracle has some contracts, Microsoft has some contracts, Google. But AWS is the biggest.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Isn't there a national security problem with that? It just seems so. Apart from a conflict of interest, it actually sounds like this could be a big national security security problem.

[Amy Nelson]

I think it is. I mean, for so many reasons. First, you have a company holding our war fighters secrets, which seems like not something we would want. Like we should build our own government data centers. And then I think second to that, you know, when you choose a data center, when you're a company, a government, anybody, and you choose a data center, it's very hard to then later move your infrastructure. It would be like saying, okay, we're not going to be in the Pentagon anymore. We're going to just leave this building, knock it down, start over. It takes years, right. So you build your entire infrastructure in there. And so AWS knows that. And so once a company starts with them, like Netflix runs on aws, they're not moving.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And AWS just remind people, Amazon Web Services.

[Amy Nelson]

Amazon Web Services. So once you get in with a company, like once you get in the ground floor, you're staying there. And so Amazon has this leverage, right, over the government. It's a very, very close relationship. And. Yeah. And I mean, do you think that

[Mariana Van Zeller]

has something to do with why your case happened the way it did? And we'll get into your case in a second.

[Amy Nelson]

Oh, I absolutely think it has to do with why our case happened the way it did.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right. The leverage that Amazon has over the

[Amy Nelson]

government, the leverage, the relationships. I mean it's. And I don't think it's just Amazon and my family. I think every big company that has a lot of contracts with the federal government gets preferred treatment in other areas.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why many people say that we are not actually being. Our government is not actually the government. We are being ruled by these big corporations, 100% power that they yield.

[Amy Nelson]

100%. Yeah. And I think too what I learned, which I think I knew, but I didn't know the extent of it, the revolving door between people who work at these companies and work at the government is pretty shocking. And of course, if you are in government service and you know, you'll go out into the private sector and make a lot more money, you're going to do things while you're in government to help secure those relationships so that when you leave, you can make more money. It's human nature. Like, I don't fault people for it, but the government should do something to prevent that from being the incentive. Right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I mean, this happens also at the FDA and the cdc where all these. Yeah, that's exactly it. They know they're going to eventually leave the government and they're going to get these big paychecks elsewhere. So it's in their interests. I'm not saying that everybody government worker out there is bad and has bad intentions, but it does create a problem.

[Amy Nelson]

Of course, my always says, show me the incentive. I'll show the. Show you the result. Yeah, I don't know if you saw or read dope. Sick. Yeah. But you know the FDA employee that approved the very strange and singular prescription description for oxy.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

Left the FDA and went to work for the Sacklers.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yes, I know that. Well, you know, I've covered the opiate epidemic for a long time, so I know that. Well, that's why it was the first thing I mentioned was that, okay, so there you are, you're leading a great life, you started a company that's doing really well. And then 9 COVID 19 happened, not 9, 11 COVID 19 happened.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And what happened then?

[Amy Nelson]

So, and this is mid March 2020. The first thing that happened when Covid happened is that my business just kind of cratered because my entire business model was built on how many people can you fit into, you know, so many square feet for how many hours a day? And so, you know, that was a really big thing to deal with, and it was scary, and I didn't know what would happen. But two weeks into the pandemic, something else happened. And around 6:45am On April 2, 2020, the FBI knocked on our door. And I didn't know who it was. I saw people in kind of like official looking clothes. And I thought, oh, maybe it's like someone from health services. Maybe something's happened overnight with the pandemic. And I kind of. When the knock came on the door, we had a glass door, and I looked through and I kind of shrugged at the people on the other side, like, who are you? Because I don't normally get a knock at the door at 6:45. And they flashed their FBI badges. And I don't really remember exactly what I felt in that moment except kind of panic, like, why is the FBI at my house? Is somebody hurt? What's going on? And I opened the door and they said they wanted to speak to my husband. And he's an entrepreneur, he's in real estate development, who knows? And I did look at him, though, when he came down the stairs to speak with them. And as an attorney, I said, you cannot talk to these people without a lawyer. And he kind of shrugged. And he talked to them for a few minutes, and then he said, you need to speak to my lawyer. But they handed him letters before they left.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wait a second. Why did he decide to speak to them? And then why did he stop speaking to them? What was it exactly that happened in that conversation?

[Amy Nelson]

So he decided to speak to them the same reason I think many people do, which is like, well, I've done nothing wrong, so I can talk to the FBI, but law enforcement, you should never speak to law enforcement without an attorney. It doesn't matter if you.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And the vast majority of people do. Right?

[Amy Nelson]

Of course they do, because they think if I ask for an attorney, I'll sound guilty of something, which. No, you sound smart.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And, you know, law enforcement are trained to get a particular answer from you or to, you know, to do what they want, not what you want. And also, people say, don't ask for an attorney because they don't have one. You know, and they're expensive.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

But then, you know, they asked my husband a few questions about another real estate developer that he had worked with while he was at Amazon, whose name is. His name is Brian Watson. And my husband had met him in person, I think, twice. And, you know, I knew Brian Watson's name because my husband and I talked about business a lot. And they said to him, they asked him about Brian Watson, and then they said something to the effect of, this is your chance to help yourself. And my husband then said, no, this is my chance to call my lawyer. You know, he, like, he realized then he's like, I don't know what they're getting at, but clearly they think I've done something wrong. And so they handed him a letter telling him that he was the target of a federal criminal investigation being run out of the Eastern District of Virginia. We were in Seattle, 3,000 miles away, and this is in Alexandria, Virginia. And they also gave him a letter telling him that they intended to seize certain of our bank accounts. And I remember looking at both of these letters and thinking, what in the hell is this? Because I was a lawyer, but I was a civil lawyer. I didn't know anything about criminal law, and they were going to take our money. I also didn't know that the government could take your money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right. And one question, too, is the importance of the Eastern District of Virginia. Why is that? What does that mean to you when you saw that?

[Amy Nelson]

So a lot of people right now in the news are learning a lot about the Southern District of New York. And so the DOJ has 93 offices around the country, and they are named by their location. The Southern District of New York is Manhattan. It's where, you know, it's in the news because of Epstein. The Eastern District of New York, or, sorry, the Eastern District of Virginia, is equally as well known among many circles because this is where the intelligence agencies are. This is where the Department of Defense is the CIA. It's where all the national security criminal activity takes place. Like where they indicted Edward Snowden. Right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So where they also have some of the best prosecutors. Right. If they want a serious case, if they're really serious about going after you, this is a good place to start, right?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. They're very aggressive.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

So it's like the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia are known as the most aggressive prosecutors in America.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Did you know that when you realize that that's what was implicated here? No.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I really knew nothing, Mariana. Like, I Googled what is the target letter? And was immediately petrified, because when you Google. When you Google what is a target letter, you learn that when there's a federal criminal investigation that you're involved in, you're either a target, a subject, or a witness. Okay, You're a witness. They're like, we just need to talk to you so you can give us information about bad things we think happened. When you're a witness. When you're a subject, the government's like, I don't know, maybe you did something bad. Maybe you're just a witness. We don't really know. But when you're a target, when you get a target letter, the government has decided you have committed a crime, and they're telling you in advance of indicting you. And typically, what happens when you get a target letter is that you are indicted within 60 days unless you plead guilty. I didn't know any of this, but I learned very quickly, kind of how this. There's a game, there's a system. It works generally the same way every time. And 98.2% of the time, when someone is accused of a federal crime in America, they plead guilty.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow. That high a number.

[Amy Nelson]

And when you plead guilty, the government doesn't have to prove anything. They don't have to share with you their investigative tactics, whether they followed the rules or not. You can negotiate the facts, negotiate what you plead to, and then you're not actually indicted by a grand jury. You plead guilty, and you go and enter that plea.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And why do you think so many people plead guilty?

[Amy Nelson]

So many reasons. I think a lot of people do not understand the system at all. And they think if I'm accused of something, I must have done something wrong. They know. They being doj, they know better than I do. And one thing I think wasn't clear to me about federal criminal law is that a lot of it is gray areas. Right. You might, like in my husband's case, he was accused of criminally violating his Amazon employment contract. It is a law called private sector honest services fraud. I've never even heard of that law. And it's a very terrifying law because it allows, like, the thing that's difficult about this law is, say, Netflix's employment contract allows you to take a referral fee, but Amazon's doesn't. And then Amazon can go say, well, you took a referral fee, you should go to prison. Where, if you did it at Netflix, you'd be fine. And the criminal law isn't supposed to be different based on what company you work at.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But in his case, he didn't actually. Right. I mean, he was.

[Amy Nelson]

In his case, ultimately, my. A federal judge ruled that my husband adhered to his employment contract in a civil case.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

Like, let alone there was no crime.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Crime. Right. Okay.

[Amy Nelson]

But, you know, I. But, you know, I. One of the reasons I think people plead guilty is they don't understand the laws. They don't understand what they're being accused of. But then, aside from that, there's money. It costs millions of dollars to defend yourself in a criminal trial at the federal level. Like, it just does. And that is impossible for most people. And a lot of people don't put a lot of faith in public defenders because they're overloaded with cases. Excellent lawyers, best lawyers out there. But they have so many cases. And then if you can't afford it, there's the issue of the tools the government can use to encourage you to plead guilty. And I learned about all of these by living through them, and it was just a wild education. So I mentioned that the government gave us a letter saying they intended to seize our assets. Right. There is something in America called civil forfeiture, which I didn't know about, which is a privilege that I didn't know about it. But the government can seize your assets on the suspicion that they're tied to a crime. The government does not need to charge you with a crime or prove one. So just on a random Tuesday, six weeks after the FBI knocked on our door, the DOJ emptied every single bank account we had.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So we're talking your checking account, your savings account, your retirement account, everything you owned.

[Amy Nelson]

Not our 401, which we did, had to liquidate to live off of, but all of our bank accounts, including, like, they didn't accuse me of a crime, but they seized my bank account because my husband had wired me money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow. And they also seized the money that you'd sent. Can you tell? Walk us through that the money that you sent another.

[Amy Nelson]

You know, when you talk about forfeiture, my husband had hired lawyers because this was six weeks after he was accused. He'd hired attorneys and he'd sent a large amount of money to them because it costs a lot of money to defend against criminal allegations. And the government not only seized money from our bank accounts, they went and seized the money my husband had paid to the law firm before your accounts

[Mariana Van Zeller]

were seized, which meant retroactively. They went and seized everything.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Which meant that then you guys could not pay the lawyer.

[Amy Nelson]

Right. I mean, it was. It was. It was horrifying. And I can explain what we did. But the. In addition to civil forfeiture, which is, you know, if you can't pay your mortgage or feed your kids, how can you defend yourself? So that's a great way to encourage a plea. They also. They threatened me with criminal charges eventually to try to get my husband to plead guilty, which is a very tried and true tactic. They will threaten adult children or spouses.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And what were they saying? How could even that. Oh, for you.

[Amy Nelson]

So when they can't. When they can't get you to plead guilty, when they can't get the target to plead guilty to the alleged crime, they'll try to tack on other crimes. And a lot of one is taxes. And it's really interesting. So we paid. We had a nanny, which I know is a privilege, but we both worked very full time. We had four kids under the age of six. And we paid our nanny over the table with employment taxes. Thank God. Because if we hadn't. And if we'd paid her under the table and the government had come and said, we're going to accuse you of tax fraud. They could have accused me of tax fraud for that. And so that's a lever that they pulled. They threatened my father with federal criminal charges.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Are you serious? Is that allowed? That's crazy.

[Amy Nelson]

Anything's allowed. I mean, this is the. Like. If you talk to. There's a governor, Bob McDonnell, he was indicted for honest services fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia. And he went to a jury trial, and he lost. And then the supreme court overturned his conviction. 9, 0. Same prosecutors as we had years earlier, but they indicted his wife with him. She was also convicted. And they threatened to indict his adult children. And they. I know. So. I know so many people. So many people who pled guilty in the Varsity Blues scandal. I've talked to them. A lot of them. They threatened the spouses like it's a. You know, because you're like if you have kids and they're going to put both people in prison. So. And then yeah, they threatened my father because we had, my father was terminally ill and we helped him financially. And then my father got a life saving kidney transplant in April of 2020 and two weeks after that the FBI seized all of his money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

They, so they seized his money as well.

[Amy Nelson]

And he was two weeks post kidney transplant and he needed to pay for medicine and my mother, his ex wife, had to pay for it.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wait, this is insanity. So they seized, on what grounds did they seize his money?

[Amy Nelson]

Because we'd wired him money. My husband had wired my dad money and so they thought.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But they seized not only that money but his money as well.

[Amy Nelson]

Then they took everything. I mean it's. And I will say because I'm an obsessive researcher and I love the facts. Over the years that we were fighting the DOJ and I was realizing that the prosecutors in Virginia had a very close relationship to Amazon. I was like, have prosecutors in Virginia ever used civil forfeiture like this? Usually they use it in drug cases. Right. They're going to try to stop drug

[Mariana Van Zeller]

cartels like cocaine trafficker and let's get

[Amy Nelson]

all the money that he's got. And I went back through the docket in the Eastern district of Virginia and could not find a single instance similar to what they'd done to our family. And in fact, years later we got most of the money back. And we also got the emails between Amazon's lawyers and the prosecutors and the prosecutors admitted to Amazon in an email, we have to give them the money back because we seized it too early years later.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And this was just recently actually it was after what happened to you, but recently. And I want to get to how it all came sort of full circle in a way. But tell me that morning. So they come for your husband, they leave the two letters. Was there ever a part of you that thought I have to have a conversation with my husband. Maybe he did something and he didn't tell me, was there?

[Amy Nelson]

No. And you know, it's so I get this question a lot and I knew all about my husband's business activities because you know, we're, we're partners in life and we're work, we talk about everything. And this was all related to like whether my husband's Amazon employment contract and post employment terms allowed him to start his business and take certain type of investment.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah. Actually, can you explain that?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So people understand because I know that there's a lot of people and You've said this before how there's a lot of people, even when you started telling your story, that said, this is bs. She's probably. Her and her husband are definitely guilty.

[Amy Nelson]

I know, I know.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So please explain that exactly. What was he doing? What was his job and then what he was accused of.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, so my husband.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

You already said what he did.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, he was. He built data centers for Amazon and, you know, worked with developers who are building data centers that Amazon would lease. And my husband started working at Amazon in 2012 and he signed Amazon's original employment contract. It is a wild document. I will be the first to admit that. It's 10 pages long. And I think it's very. Jeff Bezos the way he used to be. It's very kind of libertarian. And it allowed Amazon employees to start their own businesses while they worked at Amazon. It allowed them to seek investment, to start those businesses as long as their investor wasn't also an investor in Amazon. It allowed them to do business with people doing business with Amazon as long as the contract wasn't like the exact same activity Amazon was doing with that.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

As long as you're not taking business away from Amazon yet.

[Amy Nelson]

And so it allowed. It allowed conflicts of interest, like, and to be fair, Jeff Bezos has a ton of conflicts of interest, right? Like, you know, the Washington Post contracts with aws, you know, Blue Origin, like, and so it allowed all of these things. And so my husband, toward the end of his employment with Amazon, decided to start a company because he wanted to leave. And he was like, I'm going to go build data centers on my own and do it and do it for more money, More money. Other people. I don't want to be at Amazon anymore. It's a grind. I've been here forever. And one of his investors was somebody who had worked with the guy, Brian Watson, that I mentioned, a real estate developer who built data centers that Amazon leased. The guy that worked for Brian Watson had referred Brian Watson to Amazon, connected Brian Watson to Amazon, and he earned a referral fee, which is perfectly legal in commercial real estate. And then that guy later invested in my husband's new company. My husband did not know this man when he worked with Brian Watson. He did not know this man earned a referral fee when it happened. Like he never met him. This was all after the fact. And so. And that's what happened. And it's papered by lawyers like my, like so many lawyers involved in this. It's all written down. There are contracts. It's all there. And Then my husband started his company, and he was operating his company, and then.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So you knew immediately that this was bullshit, that there was. They didn't have a case, that this was wrong and they. That your husband was not guilty of anything.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes, absolutely.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And so you decided, and then what was your reaction during what happened to you during those six weeks before the asset forfeiture?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I wish I could have say. I wish I could say I was this strong person who immediately jumped in the fight, but I wasn't. I don't. Like, in truth, I don't remember every day of that time period, but I remember I was shaken and I couldn't eat. I lost £20. My hair started falling out. Because what I was reading online was that if you're accused by the federal government of a federal crime, you're screwed. It's game over. You can't beat them. Once you're in their crosshairs, they won't let go. And I just thought, my husband's gonna go to prison. He hasn't committed a crime. He's going to go to prison, and my four little girls won't be with their dad. And I also know my husband. He is not the type of person that could be caged. And so it was heartbreaking. And then to me, justice and our democracy had always been this kind of North Star. Like, the way a lot of people believe in religion. I believed in that. I had always worked in politics. I worked for President Carter at the Carter center and worked on elections around the world, like in Ethiopia and Jamaica. And I just cared so much about this. And for me to see this machinery come at my family like this, it was like. It was just heartbreaking. Yeah. And I was like. My kids were so little, too. And I think one of the hardest things when I look back is like, I think I just disappeared for them kind of mentally, and that's hard. As a mom, you can understand, like, I feel really guilty about that.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, you're still getting. You talked about this a bunch of times where you still get emotional talking about it. And I can only imagine. Yeah, but I wouldn't feel guilty because I think that's the reaction that most people would have. And I think most people, quite frankly, would not have had the strength to stand up and fight the way you did.

[Amy Nelson]

Well, I can remember the moment I decided to fight because I didn't really decide. I'm really close to my mother. She worked my entire life. She's incredible. She's the strongest person I know. And because it was A pandemic. She couldn't come from Ohio to Seattle when this happened. You know, we're so isolated, so we were going through this completely by ourselves and the whole world is shut down. And we've, you know, one knew what we were going through because we were very quiet at the beginning because you think, just work this out. We'll tell, we'll tell. We didn't even know actually that Amazon accused my husband. At the beginning, we thought it was like some random person. And my mother, one day I was literally sitting on my bathroom floor hiding, and my mom FaceTimed me and she looked at me and she's like, you've got to get up. And I was like, I can't. And she's like, yes, you can. She's like, and also you have to. She's like, you've got to get up and fight. She's like, I know it's going to be hard, but if anybody can do it, you can. So get up. And I was like, oh, fine. Like, I think I finally was like, okay, fine, I will just get up and I will start doing things.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And your mother is awesome.

[Amy Nelson]

She's amazing. My mother is. She's incredible. And, and also, you know, she never waved. My parents never wavered. My husband's parents never wavered. Everyone was like, we're in, we're doing this.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What about your friends?

[Amy Nelson]

Oh, friends. Friends was so much more complicated for us because, you know, a lot of people don't want to be near the specter of an accusation. And for my husband, a lot of his friends were tied to his work and that was like, they were out, right? Like, because of Amazon.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So you guys lost a lot of friends.

[Amy Nelson]

We lost a lot of friends. But on the flip side of it, I really learned who our people were. And like, that is a lesson. I mean, that is a lesson in love and I'm so grateful for it. I have so many people that are amazing around our family.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, it's almost like a filtering situation.

[Amy Nelson]

It is not one I'd wish on anyone, but it is like, it's one of those moments in life where you realize who your people are.

[Theo Vaughn]

Your little one grew three inches overnight.

[Amy Nelson]

Adorable. Also expensive.

[Theo Vaughn]

Sell their pint sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees because somewhere a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes

[Amy Nelson]

his kids will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth.

[Theo Vaughn]

Bird budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

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[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, and my husband said something to me too, which I think really helped. He looked at me and he said, look, I have accepted the worst possible outcome because I have accepted that I might go to prison. He said, you need to accept it too. And then we both need to do everything we possibly can to make it not happen. And that, like, you can't live in the world you want to live in. You can't have the tools you want to have. You just have to do what you can with what you have. And that's where we were.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And I mean, we had to figure out money, we had to figure out taking care of our kids, we had to figure out how to fight. We had to figure out the facts. I mean, we were just like, okay, yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

It's almost like embracing the worst case scenario.

[Amy Nelson]

Right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

We already know what the worst case scenario is, and there's a chance that will happen, but then it's, how can we make sure that we do everything in our power to not have that happen to us?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. And I think, like, it's also. I mentioned earlier when I started my company, like, I had to embrace this idea that I could fail. And it was really the first time in my life that I let myself embrace that idea. Because I think growing up as a. You're the same growing up as a. In the 80s and 90s, like, as a woman, you are. You know, you're kind of like, I have to be good. I have to be perfect. I have to nail this. I get one shot. Yeah. And I think because I'd taken that pivot into entrepreneurship, I realized you could fail and still keep going. Like, they're not going to cancel you as a person. And so I did allow myself to say, like, I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but I've got to try. And I think for our daughters, too, I had to say I did everything I could.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So what did that look like when you started that fight? What was that like? And this was before the forfeiture?

[Amy Nelson]

That's. No, this was after the forfeiture. I mean, I think I was, like, sort of engaged before the forfeiture, but my mother called me after, and it was really just like. I mean, Mariana, like, the DOJ came, my company is falling apart, then they seize our money. Then two weeks after they seize our money, the FBI came back and executed a search warrant, which was bizarre, because usually they don't tell you you're the target of an investigation and then search your home two months later.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah. Right. No, because you would have had time, if you were actually guilty, to hide all the evidence.

[Amy Nelson]

Correct. So that was weird, but it's just like the punches kept coming. And it was after that that my mother told me to get up. And I think at that point I was also kind of like, fuck these guys. Like, this is ridiculous.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So they left you a letter saying they were going to take away all your money, but they didn't do it until six weeks later. Was it just one morning you wake up and there's no more money there?

[Amy Nelson]

There's nothing there on that afternoon. And I was. I'll never forget it, because I was on a zoom with a bunch of other entrepreneurs talking about navigating the pandemic. So I was still trying to be normal or something. I still had to run my company. And I got an alert on my phone from Wells Fargo that my account was overdrawn. And I was like, what? And, you know, because something like an automatic charge was going through and it wasn't. And there was no money there. And I opened it up and there was like. The last entry was funds seized by order. By order of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I screamed. I mean, I screamed because it was shocking.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And my husband came running in and I said, look at your. Look at the other accounts. And everything was gone.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So what did you do then?

[Amy Nelson]

So when we got the first letter that we. They intended to seize our accounts, we opened up a separate. We each opened up a separate bank account and put, like, our paycheck, my paychecks, his consulting checks in those new bank accounts. So we had, like, six weeks of money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And at the time when you were doing this, were you thinking. Yes. Were you thinking, is. I mean, I know you were thinking, this is a good idea, because I have to figure out how to say, if they do take all my money, I have to have some money to live. Was there a part of you that was thinking, maybe I'm doing something that they're. Yeah. That, like, feels guilty.

[Amy Nelson]

Like, later we, you know, we sold our house to pay lawyers, and I felt like we were going on the run. Like, we weren't. But like every you. When you're accused, you start to feel as if you are a criminal and you're, like, doing all these things, like, I'm a fugitive or, you know, and it's. I laugh about it now, but it felt very bad. It felt very scary. So we had about six weeks of our savings at that point, and then Carl kept consulting for another couple of months until it was public, and then no one would work with him. And then I kept working, but we just. And I think for me, the point of no return, of we're doing this, was in the fall of 2020. So six months in, I think I realized this wasn't going away. The month before, Amazon had sued my husband in civil court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So they weren't happy with just the federal. Well, they thought they could get the case.

[Amy Nelson]

Right. If you think about it, playing the odds, right, Amazon hired former federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia to go lobby their old colleagues for these criminal charges. It's like Amazon specifically hired a former EDVA prosecutor named Pat Stokes to go and lobby his former colleagues.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And I'd like you to explain why, because this is a question that I had that I actually researched this morning. Why wouldn't Amazon just go with a civil lawsuit against you guys instead of trying for a federal criminal case?

[Amy Nelson]

So this is so wild. And like, these are things we had to uncover over years. And if I hadn't, if Amazon hadn't sued my husband, we never would have figured any of this out. So. Talk about bad lawyer ideas. So Amazon had leased these data centers from the developer Brian Watson, that I told you about. And Brian Watson and his money partner had a contract together, and they owned these data centers that Amazon was leasing. And the only way Brian Watson's partner could kick him out of these $500 million contracts is if Brian Watson pled guilty or was found guilty of a felony.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And why would he want to kick him out?

[Amy Nelson]

So Brian Watson's business partner was called a firm called ipi. Okay. They were just the money in this deal, but they had recently started their own real estate development company and they wanted to build data centers that Amazon would lease. And they weren't getting anywhere with Amazon. So they tried to buy Brian Watson out of these data centers and he didn't want to sell them. So then they accused him of a crime and they accused him of paying a kickback to my husband. And that is why they went and thought as to why Amazon did it. You have got me. I think Amazon got completely conned by ipi. So Amazon, who do they care who owns the data centers they're leasing? I don't know why they got involved in the contract dispute between Brian Watson and this other company. Um, but except for the law firm that represented the other company, IPI also represented Amazon. Huh. So I really, it's Gibson done. And I really think they kind of orchestrated this. It's my opinion. Because Amazon could have stayed out of that fight.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah. And just let them.

[Amy Nelson]

Because they got in the middle of it. Amazon could be liable for the half a billion dollar contract. It's called tortious interference. It's like a getting involved in a contract fight between other people.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So it was in their interest that Brian Watson would be removed from this or would be found felony.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. And the thing is, here's the craziest thing. And again, we discovered this all because of the civil litigation. Amazon and IPI kicked Brian Watson out of the contract secretly, like in the middle of the night on February 19th, after securing a meeting with the DOJ. And then their first meeting with the DOJ was about seven hours later on the morning of February 20th. Like, they didn't even try. Right. Like you just because they played the odds and they thought people would plead and then none of this would matter, none of it would come to light. Right. And. Yeah, right. And it's like, I think they would have tried harder to cover it up if they'd ever thought anybody would be able to figure out what happened, because it's really obvious.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Did Brian Watson plead guilty, by the way, or what happened to him?

[Amy Nelson]

No, he's still fighting. He's fought every step of the way. He has sued Amazon and IPI for $2 billion.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So. But I still don't understand. Why wouldn't Amazon and kind of understand, because like I said, I researched this this morning, and there's a big difference, obviously, between a federal criminal case and a civil case by Amazon. Why wouldn't Amazon, if they were really explain. Yeah. Why wouldn't Amazon just say, we're just. We think it's because they didn't actually think your husband did anything wrong. And what they were trying to do was get. But why not do it through civil courts?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, they needed a felony conviction in order to get out of $500 million in contract damages. Okay.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

They needed a felony conviction.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. They needed the felo contract that was breached between the developer, like, literally said, you can only get out of this contract without damages.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay.

[Amy Nelson]

Felony conviction. And the reason they didn't just accuse Brian Watson of a crime is like, what solo crime could he have committed? He didn't steal any money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

The data. Amazon, this is all about these data centers that Amazon leases. Amazon still leases the data centers. They're making billions of dollars off of them. They are perfectly happy with the data centers. They love it. They're great. Yeah, they were. And it's been proven in court that these are the best deals that Amazon ever got financially, ever again.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

They make much more money from the data center than they actually do from the retail company.

[Amy Nelson]

They make much more money from data centers. And when I say these are the best deals, these were the lowest cost leases Amazon had ever signed for data centers. Wow. So it's like, you know, they had to. They came up with this idea of honest services fraud, which is a process crime. So it's not a financial crime. It doesn't financially hurt anyone.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay, so you are. Let's go back to. To your. So where were we? You were.

[Amy Nelson]

So I would say the moment that, like, I was really like, we're all in, is so, you know, it's the fall of 2020. Amazon has sued my husband in civil court because not everybody pled. So now they're like, oh, shit, we have to take the next step and sue will put more pressure on them. Amazon knew that the government had seized all of our money. Amazon had, in fact, sent over, hopefully to the doj, my husband's employee bank account information from when he was an employee without a subpoena, which I think is a violation of the law. So we have that email, and then the government seized our bank accounts. And so Amazon knew we had no money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So basically they were cooperating. They were talking to each other the whole time.

[Amy Nelson]

They were like. Because we got all the emails between DOJ and Amazon in the civil case, the level of partnership and media has called it a partnership is really stunning. I mean, the day that they came to knock on our door, April 2, 2020, the FBI knocked on doors all over the country from, like, the group of people Amazon accused. And they were on the phone with Amazon lawyers about every hour, giving them updates, like, reporting to them. It doesn't really make any sense, as

[Mariana Van Zeller]

if they were working for Amazon instead of working for the government.

[Amy Nelson]

Oh, there's an email where Amazon's lawyer, the former federal prosecutor Pat Stokes, emailed the prosecutors and said, I want to weigh in on when I think you should take this investigation over. Like, look at the juxtaposition. Like, on the one hand, like, Amazon said they wanted a criminal investigation, they immediately had access. And in fact, the woman who was in charge of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Virginia emailed Amazon's lawyer, Pat Stokes, and said, like, please don't worry. We've hand selected our two best prosecutors for you and Amazon's important matter for you. They actually said, for Amazon, for your client's important matter. That's the quote. For your client's important matter of the criminal violation of the employment contract. And you look at that versus Larry Epstein, Larry Nassar's victims, Jeffrey Epstein's victims, or like a small. Do you think a small hardware shop could go to the DOJ and say, I think this person got a kickback. The DOJ would not care.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I mean, like you said, even like a mother whose daughter's gone missing and perhaps a victim of sex trafficking, if they would go, I want to find that guy and I want to make sure that he goes to prison for the rest of his life. Yeah. I don't think there would be this level of cooperation between the two.

[Theo Vaughn]

No.

[Amy Nelson]

And I really think, too, I think we have this idea that if you allege that someone committed a crime and you go to the authorities, the authorities take your statement, they take your evidence or whatnot, and then they go and they investigate. That is not what happened here. For years, they were emailing. They were on the phone on sometimes on daily basis, sometimes a weekly basis. There are hundreds of emails. There were over 75 meetings, all for this alleged process crime that Amazon had.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Have you run this through these emails, through with other prosecutors, federal prosecutors, and what do they say?

[Amy Nelson]

Every federal prosecutor, every former federal prosecutor, and actually a few current, have been shocked by this and disappointed in their colleagues. They've never seen anything like it. That's what I always hear. One of the things that's still very hard for me to wrap my head around with all of this is there were probably 20 prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia that worked on this at one point or another. One is now a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. One went to go work for Jack Smith. One's a magistrate judge. One has started a law firm to fight for the rule of law against Trump's destruction of it, in their words. And not one of them will come forward and say, we didn't do the right thing here and that. I don't get it.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

How many were there involved that you know of? Prosecutors?

[Amy Nelson]

20 or 25. I could list them all out.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What do you think was. I understand why Amazon wanted this, according. I mean, I understand your explanation for why Amazon wanted this. What do you think was it. Was. Was there in it for the government?

[Amy Nelson]

So I don't, you know, I don't. I wish I could say there was some grand conspiracy. I think there's a couple of things, and I mentioned, we talked about this earlier, that, you know, most people who work for the federal government leave and go to the private sector. And when you think about a federal prosecutor's incentive, when they're working for the government, they need to build relationships that they can monetize when they leave. And that explains everything as to why, like, they're not really going to help the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, because those women aren't going to hire them when they leave the doj. But you know who will? Amazon. Amazon. Right. Like it's, it's as simple as that. And I think prosecutors don't want to think that, but like it's, that's a natural reaction.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right?

[Amy Nelson]

Like that's, I don't, it's bad. The outcome of it hurts people like me, but I think that's it. And then I think also, you know, Amazon specifically hired one of their former colleagues. And like, we trust people we know. Right, Right. Like when Patrick Stokes walked in there with these allegations, his former colleagues believed him. Right?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, I think more probably it's more I'm trying to give them obviously a benefit of the doubt. I don't think 20 prosecutors that are involved in this case are all trying to think about how we can benefit Amazon in detriment of this family or even in detriment of the government. But I think that, yeah, I was reading about this today. When you have a big case like this and it's handed to you by a company like Amazon and they've already done the work for you, the lawyer that represents Amazon has already shown, you know, because it is a lot of work to put a case together and for an indictment when they've put the case together already and they've done all the work and here it is, I'm handing you all the evidence, all the paperwork to take these people down, a case that's going to probably look good on their careers because they took down people that, you know, that was a big case involving millions of dollars.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So maybe there's like a professional incentive there.

[Amy Nelson]

I think so too. You know, the DOJ issue issues press releases. Right. They want the public to know and they note the prosecutors so they can leverage that. And, you know, I think you're right. And I do think, you know, when companies put cases together and the prosecutors trust the private attorneys, I can give you an example of like what happened in our case, which is. It blows my mind. So, you know, my husband was accused of criminally violating his Amazon employment terms. Do you think the prosecutors asked to see those employment terms?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

They did not.

[Amy Nelson]

They did not.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Are you serious? They never saw the contract, the 10 page contract that you mentioned? He said no.

[Amy Nelson]

And we found this out because when Amazon sued my husband in civil court, they sued him for violating a contract that he didn't sign. Because Amazon later changed its contract. And although Amazon had like a hundred exhibits to their complaint that was sworn under oath, they didn't attach the employment contract. And so we immediately went to Amazon's lawyers and said like, the terms you say that like Carl owed to the company, those aren't his employment contract. And they were like, what do you mean? Because they just assumed my husband didn't have a copy of his employment contract.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Oh my God, this is so banana.

[Amy Nelson]

And so we were like, we have. And my husband's lawyers were very smart and they were like, show us the employment contract that you said he breached. Amazon's lawyers showed us an employment contract, a version of the new contract signed by someone named Carl Nelson, similar name to my husband, electronically signed, didn't, without the DocuSign envelope. I called a friend of mine who worked at Amazon and I was like, go in the People Finder and find a Carl Nelson. She went into the people finder and found I got an employee named Carl Nelson who started in 2017.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

No way.

[Amy Nelson]

And then we went back and we were like, that's not Carl. Here's a copy of his contract. And they were like, because my husband's name is Carlton Nelson. And they were like, oh, we're sorry about that. Our mistake. Every Amazon employee has an ID number, like a Social Security.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

You can't.

[Amy Nelson]

People from Amazon HR have reached out to me and said there's no way that could have been a mistake.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

This is so insane.

[Amy Nelson]

I know, but the thing is like they'd walked through a door and they had to keep going, right? And so they had told the DOJ that my husband wasn't allowed to start this company and seek investment when in fact he was. But do you think like the lawyers were going to be like, oh shit, we've made a mistake, we'll back off. No, they couldn't because they were half a billion dollars in, right. In terms of like their risk. And so they just kept going. And their statement was, well, we don't read the contract the same way that you do. The prosecutor said that to us for years. We're like, but it's plain language that a first year law student could read. And they're like, eh.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So you don't think they actually ever read the contract that your husband signed?

[Amy Nelson]

No, they eventually did. And like, and we also that the DOJ told us in writing that they didn't have the contract when they seized our money. Like, you know, so. But like nobody's ever been held responsible for this. But I just to go back to your point that, you know, when prosecutors are handed a case with like baked allegations and you know, people, they Trust, say the facts have been research. The DOJ believes them, and they really shouldn't. Like, you should verify, because again, if it was like Bob at the hardware store, they wouldn't believe Bob. And so my biggest issue with all of this is we say we have one rule of law, but we don't. We see it every day. And not only do billionaires exist by a separate set of rules, as we see, I think that people with access and relationships live by a separate set of rules. And when you don't know what the rules are, how can you play the game? That's the terrifying part to me. My husband did everything right, and our lives were annihilated. And I think it's like a miracle that we survived and most people can't. And how many people have been through this and been destroyed? And that's not justice. And that's where I go back to the prosecutors. Like, prosecutors are there to seek justice. They're supposed to follow the facts and the law. And that did not happen here. And I cannot understand why not one of them will stand up and say something. It blows my mind.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Have you been in touch with any of them?

[Amy Nelson]

Yes, I've been in touch with one of them, Russell Carlberg, who's the one who's still at the doj. And I reached out to him recently, and I asked. They kept 15% of our money when the civil forfeiture, when they seize your money and don't charge you with a crime, eventually the government has to sue your money in a civil lawsuit. So they sued our money, and they said to us, like, do you want to settle? And we desperately needed money to pay our lawyers. And so we said, fine, like, give us 85% of it. And they did.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think if you'd asked for 90, they would have been.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes, I do. I think they had no intention of proving it. So, like, you know, kick yourself. But you're kind of just like, you're doing what you can day by day. And so I went to Russell Karlberg

[Mariana Van Zeller]

and I said, and sorry, you got the money back when? Three years later?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, yeah. And I went. I went to Russell Carlberg this summer, I think, and I was like, can we have back the other 15%?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

Because otherwise you're incentivizing Amazon to lie.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And what did he say?

[Amy Nelson]

He said, no,

[Mariana Van Zeller]

but did you have a larger conversation with him about, hey, do you realize that what you did was wrong?

[Amy Nelson]

I don't get the same favoritism that Amazon got. I don't get to Just go in there and have meetings whenever I want because I'm not Jeff Bezos. And so, no, he won't. No. And that's really. That's deeply disturbing too, because the reason, you know, if Amazon thinks, okay, we can do this and get away with it, they'll do it again. And Amazon doesn't do anything. People at Amazon do things. And the lawyers within Amazon that did this are still employed at Amazon. They've been promoted, they've been rewarded for doing this. And that is shocking to me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Have you ever spoken to them?

[Amy Nelson]

No. So I know the general counsel of Amazon, David Sapolsky, because when I started my company, the Riveter in Seattle, Amazon's headquartered there and Seattle's pretty small, actually. And my primary investor in the Riveter was Jeff Bezos first investor, Tom Alberg. And so I was around David Zapolsky. I met him. He knew we had four little kids. He'd shake my hand at events. And I've reached out to him directly and he's never responded.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So he's fully aware and so is Jeff Bezos of this case. Right.

[Amy Nelson]

I've sent them multiple emails with details about the lies their lawyers have said. They don't respond.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think Jeff Bezos is aware of your case?

[Amy Nelson]

Jeff Bezos is aware of our case.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

How do you know?

[Amy Nelson]

So it kicked off by someone accusing my husband of a crime to Jeff Bezos. And then that email got forwarded from Jeff Bezos email account. They've redacted the forward, but. But then also, you know, people have said things. We have mutual friends. I know a lot of people who were at his wedding, like. And so I know people have said things to him.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

The fancy wedding in Venice.

[Amy Nelson]

The fancy wedding in Venice. And so, yeah, yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So you know that he knows.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes, and I know Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon knows. Andy Jassy has blocked me on Facebook just like Lauren Sanchez has blocked me on Instagram.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Were you friends with Lauren Sanchez?

[Amy Nelson]

No, I've never met her.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But you try to be friends.

[Amy Nelson]

No, but I just would comment like,

[Mariana Van Zeller]

oh, you know your husband.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, I tag her and things. And you know, it's like it's one of the lawyers at Amazon who orchestrated all this, Yusri Omar. He has blocked me on LinkedIn and on social media channels. Like they can just block me as if I don't exist, but I do and I have to live my life.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And so I love that you're just not backing down. You keep at it in many ways and in so many ways. You were saying, how many people. We don't know how many people out there. I mean, how many people have been crushed by the government in unfair lawsuits where they're not actually guilty of anything and haven't had the strength or the means or the resources to fight, like,

[Amy Nelson]

or the legal training.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

I was a litigator, and the thing I'm really good at is pattern recognition and facts. And so it was really kind of like I. I was trained for this. Like, I was able to dive in and figure it out.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And we went really far down that conversation. But I want to get back to the civil lawsuit, so. So, okay, so they take away all your money. You are like, what happens to your life physically with your family? You have two, four daughters, so.

[Amy Nelson]

Oh, yes. And that was, like, the moment, you know, it's the fall of 2020, and I kind of looked at our money.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Oh. Cause you had put some money away to pay the lawyer. Right. But you were able to keep that money, the money that you made during those, like, six weeks?

[Amy Nelson]

And then I kept working, so we were kind of just like. But we were hobbling along, and I was like, we're gonna run out of money. And we are not the kind of people who could, like, go to parents and ask for money. Our parents don't have that money. So it was up to us. And I was looking at our income and our lawyer expenses. I think it was, like, in early October. And I realized very quickly, like, we needed to sell the house. The first house we'd ever bought.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

How long had you been living there?

[Amy Nelson]

For two, two and a half years. It was supposed to be, like, our forever home. And I realized we needed to sell the house. And at that moment, something in me kind of shifted because I didn't think about it. I was like, we're selling the house. And I realized at that point, that was my kind of burn the boats moment. You know, it's like, we're burning the boats. We are all in. Like, I don't care what's behind us. We are only going ahead, and we are giving everything we can to this. And then I just started doing things. I figured out where we were going. I figured out where we were going to stay. I found, like, a school for my kids, and we just did it.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Where did you go?

[Amy Nelson]

So we first drove to California, where my sister lived, and we stayed in the lower level of her house, all six of us in a room, but it was basement. It's California. So my sister's like, don't call it a basement because it's San Francisco, but it's a lower level with a lockout.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And you know, there was actually a lot of solace in that because I hadn't seen my sister, you know, in six months. And just to get to hug someone, you know.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, because of COVID Yeah, because of COVID Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

But I do remember, like, I was very. When I made the decision that we had to sell the house, you know, my husband's like, fine. I think he was more. He's fought so hard. But like, what he went through to think about, like, having to go and be in prison, I can't even imagine it was different than what I went through. And I remember when we were driving away from our house in Seattle, it was raining and everything was being put in storage. And our friend who'd helped us buy the house was taking care of selling it and she was so kind. But we were driving away and I was just like, I can't believe this. Like, I cannot believe this is actually happening. And we decided to tell the kids, who were still very young, that we were going on a big adventure because they don't know. And so we treated it like that, like, we're going on a big adventure. We don't really know where we're going to end up, but the journey will be interesting. And we drove all along the west coast, down to my sister's house in San Francisco and stayed with them for a month.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

She said immediately, yeah, you can come and stay with us.

[Amy Nelson]

Of course. I mean, my family, yeah, my family, we could all live together forever. But you know, we don't, we don't shut doors on people. And then we. My husband's parents live in Honolulu and we couldn't come, we couldn't go to Ohio because my dad had just had this kidney transplant. And so we couldn't stay with my parents then because he was immunocompromised and it was Covid. And so I was like, we're going to stay with your parents. And so we flew to Honolulu at the height of omicron, there were like 10 people on the plane.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow.

[Amy Nelson]

And all of Hawaii was shut down to tourism. You could only go there if you lived there. And so we moved into the same building where my father in law and mother in law lived. We stayed with them for a while in their condo and then we rented a condo and we lived there for a year. And then we went to Ohio when my father could see us and we stayed in my parents townhouse.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow.

[Amy Nelson]

Until we could rent a house, and we just kept moving. I mean, my kids went to a bunch of different schools, made a bunch of different friends. It was a lot, but.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And financially, how are you guys doing at this point? I mean, obviously not very well, but. Yeah. Tell me about the struggle there.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, it was always just like, how can we make money? What can we do? And luckily.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And how can you pay lawyers? Right. Because that's so expensive.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes. And eventually we are really lucky. And this is like, another reason we could fight is eventually we. My husband made the decision to stop working with the lawyers that were in Washington, D.C. and that costs a lot more money than lawyers in other places of the country. And he hired my friend that I've had for 20 years, Alex Little, who was a former prosecutor, lived in Nashville, and was able to help us out as friends. And we paid him, but he helped us a lot. And that was one of the reasons we were able to stay alive. And Alex is a brilliant attorney and he now has his own firm.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

How much money have you spent in total fighting this case?

[Amy Nelson]

We have incurred over $4 million in legal fees.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So crazy.

[Amy Nelson]

It's crazy. It's unbelievable.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Unbelievable.

[Amy Nelson]

And that is part of, you know, like, if you ask me how much I think Amazon has spent, I think they have spent over $100 million on lawyers.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And this is money you're never going to see back. Right.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I think there. It's an interesting question because I think, you know, my husband has a lawsuit outstanding against Amazon, and he's already won part of it. And the part he's won is that in his employment contract with Amazon, they promised to sue him in Washington State if there was ever a dispute, and they just completely breached the contract to sue him in Virginia. So we sued them for breaching the venue clause of the contract, and we've won part of that judgment so that they have to pay the difference between what it would have cost to defend in Washington and what it costs in Virginia. But there's also kind of this idea of general indemnification. It's kind of under the common law, where kind of the. If an employer sues an employee and the employee wins, the employer should pay for that, because if it was things the employee was allowed to do. So I think there's the pursuit of that.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

When did you decide that you wanted to make this go public with all of this? Because it wasn't for many months. And I know that all the lawyers were telling you not to, Right?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. So we were Quiet for a very long time. And I am a very public person. I built my company publicly and shared our family's life. And I wasn't an influencer, but I had probably 20,000 followers on Instagram. And, you know, I was looking at the landscape of what we were fighting, and I was like, these guys can just destroy us in the dark. Like, they can do anything they want if no one's paying attention. And then I. But I'd still thought, well, I should be quiet because I can still work, right? And I don't want this to be super public because I need to bring in an income. And one of the things I did, I mean, we were just constantly trying to figure out how to make money. And I loved my company, but I needed to make more money. And so I was offered a job by a public tech company in a VP role that they created just for me. It was a million dollars a year between the equity and the salary. And I was so proud of myself because I had found a way to pay for my husband's legal fees and save my family. And on the fifth day of that remote job, I got on a Zoom with my boss, and there was another person on the Zoom, and it was a lawyer, and they fired me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Because they found out about your husband's case.

[Amy Nelson]

Because they found out about my husband's case.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What did you say? I mean, what do they say?

[Amy Nelson]

What do you say? I mean, they said, we read an article, and I said, about my husband? And they said, yes. And they said, why didn't you tell us? I said, you are not even legally allowed to ask me if I'm married, like, by employment laws. And they're like, well, you should have told us. And it was just this. Like, it was a stab in the heart because I was like, oh, my God, like, how are we supposed to survive this if I can't work? And as a woman, like, as a feminist to be like, I'm sorry, we're going to assign your allegations against your husband to you. And it was a woman CEO of this company. And it was just. Anyway. And it was after that point that I was like, you know what? No matter what I say or how quiet I am, I'm tied to this. And so in that case, I'm going to say everything I need to say. And every lawyer except Alex, you know, like, Alex, you've known him for 20 years, and he's kind of like. He's like, you do what you need to do. You know the facts. He's like, I'm not involved in this. But you know, the facts, and we're not afraid of the facts, so if you want to go share them, go share them. And so I did, and I.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And you started on Instagram.

[Amy Nelson]

No, actually, I didn't. So I posted a few things on Instagram. But I'd been watching TikTok, and I'd been watching TikTok. This is, you know, 2021. I'd been watching TikTok really take off, or 2020, 2021, 2022. And I've been watching TikTok take off. And I was like, maybe I'll just try it over there. So it's not tied to my, like, Riveter account, you know, and so I didn't know if anyone would listen. And everybody listened. I mean, I have a quarter of a million followers on TikTok who tune in to hear about these intricate legal details, you know, and people were just kind of like, nobody could believe it because it's an unbelievable story that you're fighting Amazon and the doj. And I just started telling the story every day, and people listened and asked questions and listened. And also, I mean, it helped me because I felt less alone.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, of course.

[Amy Nelson]

Because it's really isolating to go through something like this. And eventually Amazon realized what we were doing, and they sent me a letter and told me it was a seasoned assist, and they said that if I didn't stop posting on TikTok in the next 48 hours and naming the lawyers involved in the case, that they would go to the DOJ and accuse me of criminal witness tampering.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And what did you do?

[Amy Nelson]

I put the letter on TikTok. I mean, like, you could laugh about it, but, you know, they know they can't tell me I can stop posting on social, and I know that because I'm a lawyer, but it's just like, bullies only know how to bully. And I think, like, one of the things that's been hardest for Amazon's lawyers is, like, they're like, we keep kicking them in the teeth and doing the things that should make people lay on the ground and stop, and they won't stop. And they're just like, I don't get it. And so I just kept posting.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What do you think resonated so much with people when you started posting and started getting all these comments and likes and shares? What was what. What message was?

[Amy Nelson]

I think there's a few things. I mean, I think. And I think even more so today than three years ago, I think Americans very Much see and feel the power that billionaires and trillion dollar companies have over us. And they don't want to be subject to that power discrepancy. And so I think it gave them hope to see, like, oh, maybe we can fight. Somebody's fighting and they're not dying. They're still there. And then I think the other reason is basic. You know, kind of it was a train wreck, and people are interested in train wrecks. That's why we gawk when we see a car wreck. It's like, you're like, what is this? And I think, you know, I think that's one of the reasons. And I had to decide to be very vulnerable, you know, and when I went on TikTok, just like when we decided to fight, I didn't know how the story would end. Like, you know, my husband could have been indicted and he could have been convicted despite the fact that he's innocent. That happens all the time. But I still wanted to do it because it was trying.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And was there a part of it also, like, for protection? The more this is out in the open, if something happens to me, the more people will know that this is going.

[Theo Vaughn]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, it's funny because, like, whenever I talk about this, I feel like I'm some conspiracy theorist, but I don't think that I am. You know, we know Amazon has admitted that they hire Pinkerton detectives. We know that Jeff Bezos hires Gavin de Becker, who has a massive security firm. Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And I'm not even talking about you thinking maybe there's an assassin that's going to come and kill you in the middle of the night. I'm thinking even more in case of other types of harassment, like other lawsuits or other ways of getting back at you. Right?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I really do. Like, there is a lot of protection in being incredibly public and that, you know, it's like you could think, okay, they sent me a cease and desist letter, but they didn't act on it because what would happen? Right? Like, what would. What would people say? They came after me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right. So they didn't do anything after that?

[Amy Nelson]

No, they didn't do anything. It was a hollow threat. It was just like, you know, at one point the DOJ would always say to my husband, like, you need to plead now. We're about to indict you, like, over and over again. At a certain point you're like, you know, keep saying this, but you don't do it.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So I love cease and desist letters. We often get them for trafficked.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And we always air them, too. We always comment and show that this person sent us a cease and desist because in many ways, it is almost like a. Acceptance of guilt.

[Amy Nelson]

I know. I mean, they don't want you to

[Mariana Van Zeller]

be talking about something that they know.

[Amy Nelson]

Oh, I know. I mean, amazing. Amazon in court filings. And Amazon called me a conspiracy theorist. It's like, guys, I'm sure they called me hysterical, all the things that they say. And it's. You know, there was even a deposition where Patrick Stokes. I wasn't at the deposition, but apparently Patrick Stokes, Amazon's lawyer, like, in the middle of the deposition, he was like, well, if you could stop telling her what to post on social media to my husband's lawyer, Alex. And I think Alex said back to him, if you think I'm telling her what to do, you don't know her very well. So, you know, it just. It really bothers them. And what are the consequences of getting on Europe's bad side? The rationale is more like those guys. How is stealth wealth changing retail? You can have taste and still buy dupes. What does a $6.2 million banana have to do with any of us? People don't like the attribution of serious financial value to comedy. Join me, Felix Salmon, and my co hosts Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spires as we talk about the most important and obscure stories in business and finance. Follow Slate Money, wherever you like to listen. I think it's interesting. I think things are changing, but, you know, traditionally in times of crisis, like the kind of traditional advice is to be quiet or issue a single statement or say, I trust the process. I don't trust the process, and I don't think anybody trusts the process anymore. And I think more now than ever, you need to tell your side of the story. If someone's telling their side.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Was there ever a moment where you were scared of telling your story like that?

[Amy Nelson]

Yes. Talk to me about that. Yeah, I mean, I laugh about the season. Desist now. But, like, threats against accusing me of a crime are frightening because I'm a mother, I have four daughters. So that felt very scary. You know, there were. I've received comments online, and I don't think, you know, I think I'm physically safe, but I receive comments like, you should die. I wish the FBI had shot you dead. You know, things like that. That's scary.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And this is from people who. Why would they just. Yeah, I mean, why? I mean, the Internet is full of trolls, like, terrible people that say terrible things.

[Amy Nelson]

I Don't know.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think a lot of people. Was there a lot? Was the majority of the comments when you started posting about your story sort of supportive, or were there. Were there a lot of comments of people who thought your husband was definitely guilty? If this was what was happening to

[Amy Nelson]

you guys, it's super interesting to me because I think at the beginning I would say it was like 70% thought he was innocent and 30% would ask questions. But now, as time went on, it was like 99% believed the truth and then 1% would say something horrible. Except Reddit. I went on Reddit at one point to share our story, and Reddit was like, oh, he should be in prison. She should be in prison. Everyone needs to go to prison. It was really. I don't know if you spent a lot of time on Reddit?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

A little bit, but I have never posted anything myself. I use it as a research tool.

[Amy Nelson]

Is you really.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Is that true?

[Amy Nelson]

It was wild.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What about the difference between TikTok and Instagram? How have you found the crowd different? Because you also started posting a little bit on Instagram, right?

[Amy Nelson]

I did eventually start posting on Instagram once I felt comfortable telling the story and realized it was. I realized I was tied to the story no matter what. And then I was like, I'm just embracing the fact that this is part of my journey and. And it can help people, and that's another part of it. Right? Like, what I have learned from being on social media is that I. So many people have come to me who had no one to go to, who thought they couldn't share their story, who were drowning in fear and shame and silence, and they've shared their stories with me. I've been able to connect them to attorneys. I'm really proud of that. But, yeah, I talk about it on Instagram and TikTok. I find those audiences to be largely the same.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Now.

[Amy Nelson]

I think maybe they weren't a few years ago, but now I think they're largely the same.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So tell me about the. How the. What's the situation like right now and how the federal government actually took it all back. Explain how that. How that.

[Amy Nelson]

So this part is wild. And this is why I don't understand why this hasn't been like a documentary or on the front page of the news in an investigative story like the Legacy News. Eventually we won Amazon's civil case. Like when Amazon sued my husband. Eventually we won. And a federal judge was like, this guy didn't even violate his Amazon employment contract. What are we doing here? But right before that happened, the federal government had told us. And this is in early 2023, that four men had pled guilty. And we were like, what? And at that moment, I was like, oh, my God, they're going to indict my husband. Like, who pled guilty? And what did they plead guilty to? And these guys, all two of them, we know that they pled guilty to helping my husband criminally violate his Amazon employment terms. And we got to depose these men. And they both said under oath that they had no idea what Amazon's employment terms were. So I question how they could sign a guilty plea saying they.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But they did plead guilty.

[Amy Nelson]

But they did. They pled guilty. And they also both.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And these were people that worked with your husband.

[Amy Nelson]

One of them was the investor.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay.

[Amy Nelson]

And one of them had worked for Brian Watson.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay.

[Amy Nelson]

And why do they plead guilty? Well, they didn't have their money seized. I'll tell you in a moment. But they didn't have their money seized. And they also both signed contractual agreements with Amazon that in exchange for their guilty pleas, Amazon would not sue them. We have those contracts, which is crazy, right? That's bananas. But they both pled guilty, and then two other guys pled guilty. We never saw those plea agreements. This is like. And the civil case is ongoing. And that was actually incredibly frightening because we knew they pled guilty, but. Which would hurt my husband. But we knew that they didn't understand Amazon's employment terms, so how could they plead guilty to helping him violate them? But then right after they pled guilty, the judge in the civil case said, my husband didn't violate his employment terms. So these guys pled guilty to helping my husband adhere to his employment contract. And after that happened, the DOJ did something absolutely extraordinary that I've never seen in any other case in American history and that they vacated for guilty pleas.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow.

[Amy Nelson]

They went before the judge and said, this is not in the interest of justice. We have to vacate these pleasure.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Which basically means you go, somebody says, I am guilty of this crime. And then the DOJ goes, I am sorry for accusing you of that crime. You are, in fact, not guilty of that crime. And we should have never. I mean, it's.

[Amy Nelson]

And we will not let you go to prison, and we will not for

[Mariana Van Zeller]

the crime that you said, yes, you committed.

[Amy Nelson]

It's insane bananas. Like, it does. It does not happen. This is. This does. Like, there's. Actually, I was doing my research, and there was a New York Times article from when the Department of Justice dismissed Michael Flynn's plea, General Michael Flynn, I think he was like the ns, the head of the NSA under Trump and the first president. It was some, you know, one of those Trump, I don't know. But anyway, the DOJ dismissed his plea, and the New York Times reporters went and asked seven federal, former federal prosecutors if they'd ever seen anything like this. And none of the prosecutors could remember a single time the DOJ had ever done that.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow, that is so crazy.

[Amy Nelson]

It's crazy. But. But it happened. And then that was that. Like, it happened. They vacated the pleas. And then Russell Carlberg called one of the other attorneys, the prosecutor, and said it's the right thing to do. We've had many meetings about this internally. And then I was like, well, so who's going to hold someone at Amazon accountable? Because somebody came to you and they lied. Like, Martha Stewart went to prison for lying to the FBI. Right. So who on that side will be going to prison?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

No one.

[Amy Nelson]

No one.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And did you have a chance to talk to the four of the people that. Whose pleas were vacated?

[Amy Nelson]

Well, this is the most interesting thing. And talk about the power of social media. After the pleas were vacated, one of the men who pled guilty, named Kyle Ramstetter, reached out to me on TikTok.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Was that the investor or was it just a thief?

[Amy Nelson]

No, it was somebody who worked for Brian Watson. He reached out to me on TikTok and he said he wanted to speak to me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Okay.

[Amy Nelson]

And I said, yes, I'd never met this person. And he called me and I recorded the phone call, which was legal. And he said that he had been threatened with everything in his life. He had been told what to say and that my husband did nothing wrong.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

No way.

[Amy Nelson]

And the prosecutors also have this information. Is this legal?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I mean, I'm assuming it's not. Right. They can't tell him what to say.

[Amy Nelson]

No, that's witness tampering. And so that's a federal crime. And the prosecutors have that recording, and they. They don't care.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But you sent it to the prosecutors. Them. And. And, wow, this is so crazy. So basically, they. He said to you that he was forced to do this and that he knew from the start that it was wrong because he knew your husband hadn't done anything wrong.

[Amy Nelson]

Just to clarify, he said your husband did nothing wrong. It's almost like.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

It's like you said, why hasn't this been made into a movie? I mean, it's almost like a Hollywood movie.

[Amy Nelson]

I think I could tell you why it hasn't been made into a movie. And this is where you get into this discrepancy in power. We think about Amazon and the ways that we use Amazon, but Amazon's power over everything in this country is truly stunning. You know, you look, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which obviously has been all over the news this week, but his control or influence over news goes far beyond that because Amazon is the largest buyer of ads in the media around the world. So Amazon sustains the legacy media with ad buys. And then if you.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Are you fucking up my podcast?

[Amy Nelson]

I hope not. Or like, I had. I had a book agent.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

Because I have, you know, I have half a million social media followers. I'm a good writer, the story's wild. And I had a book agent and an amazing proposal, and the book agent took it out to, you know, publishers, and he got phone calls, he got no emails back, but he got phone calls like, you are committing career suicide. Amazon sells 90% of books. Or.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right, that's right.

[Amy Nelson]

For entertainment. Everyone's like, why isn't this a documentary? Why isn't it a TV show? So many people have come to us wanting to do something, and then at the end of the day, they're all like, we actually can't do this because we don't want to piss off Bezos.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What happened to the book then?

[Amy Nelson]

I'm writing it. I'm going to self publish it. It's almost done.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

You're self publishing it. That's the amazing thing about social media. Right? There's a lot of horrible things about social media, but that's the amazing thing is that you have a platform that's free and out there and that you can go and tell your story.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, it's incredibly important in this day and age. It is incredibly important.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And why did. Can I ask you a question? Why did you. This was all happening, obviously, to you through your health, but why have you become the public face and not your husband?

[Amy Nelson]

So my husband is very private to begin with. He hates social media, like, with an undying passion. And then I think too, you know, while he was being investigated, he didn't want to speak publicly. Like, he didn't want to. So I think those two reasons.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Has he given interviews?

[Amy Nelson]

Yes, he's given interviews. Yeah. He gave an interview to cbs, did a piece and he gave an interview, and he's done a couple podcasts.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What toll did this have on your marriage and what toll did it have on your family?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, you know, it's the marriage piece. Like, we have four little kids. And we both work, so that in and of itself would be almost impossible. But we didn't. We still haven't really sat down and said, what did this do to our marriage? Because we're still, you know, like, dealing with it and dealing with the aftershocks. And although we won the civil case, Amazon appealed and they won that appeal. So we are now still dealing with this on the civil level.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Why do they want the appeal?

[Amy Nelson]

It's really interesting, I think, two reasons. One, the appellate court didn't know or consider the fact that Amazon's main witness, Kyle Ramsetter, had come forward and said he was threatened and coerced. So we're now dealing with that again at the lower court, now figuring out what that means. And then second, Amazon's lawyer in the appellate level, who was the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, the former number two litigator for the U.S. he told the 4th Circuit, the appellate court, that my husband's employment contract, which Amazon had called a contract all through the litigation, wasn't really a contract, and that my husband had other employment duties

[Mariana Van Zeller]

unwritten

[Amy Nelson]

in his mind, I guess, which is really interesting because Amazon just won a case in Washington State against an employee who was suing them, who said that the only agreement between Amazon and its employees was that employment contract. But so they. It's like a. And that's, that's an interesting thing that big companies will do that I've learned, is they'll take different positions with different courts, assuming that litigants won't go figure it out. And you're not allowed to do that. Like, you can't. You can't tell one court a contract means one thing and another court another. It's called judicial estoppel. And I'm really hopeful that, like, with the rise of AI, we can stop big companies from doing that because it helps so much of the research.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And in terms of your criminal case, that went away completely. They dropped everything. Was there ever an apology or ever, like, no. I mean, I guess they gave you back the 85, 85% of your money, but that's it. That's it.

[Amy Nelson]

No, they don't apologize. In fact, we asked for. They told us the criminal investigation was over. The prosecutors and we asked for what's called a declination letter, like a formal letter that, like, we could give to the world. Like, oh, they're not pursuing this. They're not charging my husband. It's over. And they were like, we don't do that.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And they also never said that they did Anything wrong. Right. They just said, we're not pursuing this because it's not in our interest.

[Amy Nelson]

Correct.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

It wasn't as if we were wrong and he's innocent?

[Amy Nelson]

No, they didn't say that. And there was something that I haven't mentioned that was like probably the most egregious thing the prosecutors did. Right before I mentioned that we got all of the communications between Amazon and the doj, right before we got those emails. As part of the civil lawsuit, the two prosecutors in charge at the time, Jamar Walker and Matthew Burke, organized a phone call between my husband and all of Amazon's targets and their lawyers and Amazon and their lawyers. And they got on the phone call, I listened in and the prosecutor said, we want to make sure no one's recording this. And I did. And then the prosecutors went on to say that if my husband and the other defendants in Amazon's civil lawsuit did not agree to an immediate pause whereby we would not have gotten the communications between Amazon and doj, my husband and Amazon's targets would get what they deserved. They were fighting a two front war against Amazon and DOJ that they could not win.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow. They said that? Those are direct quotes, as in, we're in a partnership with Amazon against this, these people and these families.

[Amy Nelson]

And Amazon was listening.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And have you released this recording or what?

[Amy Nelson]

Have you. But I have it. Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And why haven't you released the full thing?

[Amy Nelson]

I guess, I mean, it's just, it's really long. I guess I could. But also my husband is cursing throughout it, which I understand, I understand. I mean, I understand. He was just like, are you fucking kidding me? Like they're threatening, you know, they're threatening him to stop defending himself in a civil lawsuit that Amazon filed. Like, what business do prosecutors. Yeah, and it was interesting. The prosecutor said, you know, if you don't, if you don't agree to a stay, you'll be placed in an impossible position. You'll be forced to choose between pleading the fifth. Fifth at your deposition. Because, you know, and then when you plead the fifth in a civil lawsuit, the other side can use it as an adverse inference, meaning they can say like you would have said the incriminating thing. Like if you plead the fifth in a civil lawsuit, it's used against you. They're like, you'll have to plead the fifth or you'll testify. And then we'll come after you. If you say anything that's not factually correct, we'll charge you with perjury or obstruction of justice, which is like you said you would charge them with my husband with perjury or obstruction of justice. Justice. But you didn't charge Amazon with it. And we can factually prove to you that they lied. Right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That's so crazy.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So what's happening now with the appeal case then? You just. You guys are fighting it.

[Amy Nelson]

It just started up again, and we are dealing with.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But. So they lost the first. Right. They appealed, they won the appeal, and now you guys are fighting the appeal.

[Amy Nelson]

They're fighting the appeal and. But what we're doing first is Amazon has asked from Kyle Ramstetter to have all of his documents or, you know, because Kyle Rams sitter said when he called me that he had text messages or, you know, and they'll depose him. And so from there, you know, I think we'll be.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And he's willing to do it.

[Amy Nelson]

I think so. I mean, I think I'll have to. And then I think from there, we'll have to, you know, probably, you know, move to the court to show them there was witness tampering. And one remedy for witness tampering is dismissal of a case.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Wow. And you're hoping that's the.

[Amy Nelson]

Well, they don't have their star witness anymore, so I don't know.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I cannot believe this has been going on for six years. When do you think this is all going to end?

[Amy Nelson]

I hope soon. I. What I would really hope is that Amazon's lawyers or Andy Jassy, their CEO, would look at the facts and say, okay, maybe we thought this bad thing happened at the beginning, but quite literally, every step of the way, it's been proven that it didn't. And so what we're doing to these people is wrong and we should stop. I know he won't do that, but I wish you would.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But do you think that is the case, that initially they were just. They had wrong information and it was all a big mistake? It wasn't like the intentionally malicious. They made a mistake and now they're just so deep in it that they don't want to admit.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I think that they made a plan to go seek felony convictions. And I think that was wrong.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And I think because there was a financial gain.

[Amy Nelson]

Again, because there was a financial gain for that. And I think that was wrong. And I think they didn't to intend investigate the facts before they went to the doj. And I think that was wrong, and I think they should be held accountable for it. And they lied. But, like, in terms of Andy Jassy, I think he probably didn't know these things. You know, that he was then the CEO of Amazon Web Services. I don't think he knew the details then, you know, but I think he does now. Or like, I've sent him lots of emails he could know if he chose to.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And you also sent emails to Jeff Bezos, right?

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What have they. What do you say in your email, Sam?

[Amy Nelson]

I detail the misconduct of their attorneys. I give them the recordings, you know, of Kyle Ramstetter. Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think he reads them? Do you think they vope on those recordings and listen to them?

[Amy Nelson]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think they blocked you too, there?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answer to it. I think it's really sad that in this day and age, like, people at the top can kind of just block out the noise or the truth or injustice when they want to. You know, he can go to the fashion shows, but my children who've lost their home aren't worth his time.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Have you. I mean, we're talking about a fight against very powerful people who. Have you had any powerful people also on the other side supporting you, who has, like, reached out and wanted to, like, help you or did you have any of that?

[Amy Nelson]

A lot of, you know, women entrepreneurs that I know have stood by me, which I'll always be incredibly grateful for,

[Mariana Van Zeller]

and then some politicians. Any politicians involved?

[Amy Nelson]

So Mike Lee, Senator Mike Lee, I met him when I appeared on Glenn Beck's show and Mike Lee offered to help and we met with his staff, but nothing came of it. And, you know, I used to be very involved in Democratic politics. I was on Obama's National Finance committee. And, you know, I've reached out to the Washington governor, my Washington congresswoman, the Washington attorney general, and no one will listen to me.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So have you gotten more support from Republican politicians than you have from Democratic?

[Amy Nelson]

I don't think I've gotten any support from Republican politicians. I mean, I think I've had an audience with a few and it was very interesting to me when this all came to light. Tucker Carlson had me on Glenn Beck, and I've written op EDS about abortion rights in the Washington Post. This is.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So why do you think it was conservative media that gave you more of a voice?

[Amy Nelson]

I think a few things. I mean, I think that it is a traditional conservative principle to be against government overreach. And this is a classic example of government overreach. But I also think.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Until now.

[Amy Nelson]

Exactly. I know. Until you're Right. No, you're right. Until now, which is wild with what's happening with Trump and the race, 100%. But I also think that. I think our story fit a narrative that conservative media wanted to share with the world. Because this is, you know, this started under President Trump's first administration. I think he knew not a thing about it, and then it continued under the Biden administration. That's when most of the things happened. I think he knew not a thing about it. But for conservative media, they could share a story and say, see, look, Trump says the DOJ is weaponized and corrupt. It is. Right, Right. And so whereas when I would speak to friends of mine at the New York Times, because I had friends who wrote for the New York Times, friends who wrote for the Wall Street Journal, my friend at the New York Times who was the Amazon reporter was like, my editor would never let me tell this story because it supports Trump's narrative. And it's like. But it's the truth.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Literally. This is what they said.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, but it's word by word. It's the truth.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That's what they said.

[Amy Nelson]

Yes.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I mean, I might paraphrasing, but they actually said this.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. Because I will tell you, like, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, they all have all of these recordings and all this information,

[Mariana Van Zeller]

and no one has published this story before.

[Amy Nelson]

No, no one's published this story.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

It's making me nervous.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah, I know, but I mean, but I've gone. But I, you know, but I've shared this. I've shared the story for years. You know, I've been on other podcasts. It's the legacy media. Like, they. I don't know. It's interesting, but do you think it's

[Mariana Van Zeller]

about the Trump narrative, or do you think it's about being afraid of picking a fight with Amazon? Do you think it's about.

[Amy Nelson]

I think it's probably.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do you think they don't trust you? What do you.

[Amy Nelson]

No, I think it's probably both. I also think some people would think. I've heard people say this, oh, this is like rich people problems. But it's really, you know, not.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Actually, it's not. Because if they can do this to you guys, they can do this to anyone.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. And I also think, like, it's about, like, you know, it's really like, it's crushing the American spirit. Right. Like, this is the entrepreneurial dream. And if a big corporation can just crush it like that and get away with it, because people are like, well, it's not a story everyone would identify with. I would counter with. A lot of people have identified with our story. Millions of them. Right. And so. So I think it's really. I think it's an important story.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

How's your husband doing?

[Amy Nelson]

He's good. He's. My husband is the most resilient person ever. I mean, he's, you know, he's out there developing real estate. He's doing what he loves. He, you know, despite every odd against him, you know, stayed in that game, and he's, you know, rebuilding his career.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What was the lowest moment for you, the worst moment of all of us?

[Amy Nelson]

There have been a lot. I think the hardest moments for me have been the moments when my husband has felt hopeless. Because to see this man, like, so full of life and so full of ambition, broken like that, it. It was really painful.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

What. What do you think he thinks of you and everything you've done?

[Amy Nelson]

I don't. I don't know. I think he's, you know, he. He is proud. He's happy that we fought publicly. I think he's, you know, I think he. He knows that telling the story was important, but he still thinks it should have never happened, you know, So, I

[Mariana Van Zeller]

mean, does he realize that? How lucky he is?

[Amy Nelson]

I hope he does.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I mean, because so many women wouldn't have done what you did, Right?

[Amy Nelson]

And, I mean, we say that, but I think a lot of. I think a lot of people would. Or if they had.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Not women. I mean, people.

[Amy Nelson]

Not a lot of women. Or if they'd had the, like, you know, it's like, if I hadn't done it, it would have been, I think, an act of cowardice because I had the skills, I had the training. You know, it was like this perfect storm, right? Like, well, I know how to tell

[Mariana Van Zeller]

a story, which is why I say, like, he's so lucky. Not just the fact that you're amazing, but you actually had the training. You were a lawyer. You knew what you were doing. And then you're such a good teller of your story now, in many ways, you sort of took the story back. You are the one telling your story now. You. You took over your own story. And here, if we're gonna talk about my husband and our lives, then this is how we should talk about it. And this is exactly what happened to us taking control of the narrative, which

[Amy Nelson]

I think is really important. And I do think, like, I really, you know, one of the things I was hopeful. One of the few things I was hopeful for. When Trump came and died, office Was like, well, he has been. I think in some ways, you know, he was targeted by law enforcement. Right. Because in the federal legal system, like, you can choose to prosecute someone or not. It happens every day. Look, like we're not prosecuting all of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged co conspirators, but they did prosecute Trump. Right. Like, there's just choices, like, we're choosing things. And I thought that maybe he would say, well, I have seen how this system works. I don't like it, I will reform it. And unfortunately, he has done the opposite. And that was really, really disappointing to me. I think he's doing really good work on clemency and pardons.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right. But he's weaponizing the doj, which is what many people say. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's using it to his advantage.

[Amy Nelson]

Disappointing, Right, because you'd think we all have choices. Right. And like this system is broken in many ways, and people without money and access and power have a hell of a time fighting, and that's not justice. And so I wish, I hope that in telling my story, maybe we can get to reform. I think we Forget in the 70s, there was the Church Committee and Senator Frank Church brought together a lot of lawmakers to investigate the CIA and the FBI. This is after Watergate, and the agency is completely reformed because of what the Church Committee found. And we could do that again. It's been a generation, it's probably time. And if we could think of it not as a partisan exercise, but as one for the people.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And you mean in terms of the doj, like them investigating the DOJ and finding out, reforming it and trying to

[Amy Nelson]

figure out what works? Yeah. Yes, because it's like, because we have a system of pleas where almost everybody pleads guilty. They're not being heard by a jury of their peers. And because of this, I think that the FBI and the federal prosecutors break the rules of criminal investigation every day. I mean, the things I saw just in our case. Right, like we saw when the FBI executed the search warrant, they took attorney client privilege materials, like on law firm letterhead.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

Which there was no mistaking it.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right.

[Amy Nelson]

Like, and, you know, like, just simple things like that. Like, or they shared, you know, secret grand jury information with other people. Like, you see that every day. And that's not the correct process. And when you're dealing with someone's innocence, but they're going to be in a cage, like, you should take care to follow the rules, but if, you know you won't be checked, then why would you or like qualified and qualified immunity, you know, which is the doctrine we're under, which it's very hard to hold law enforcement accountable for wrongdoings. Is that the right thing to have? Because if, you know you can't be held accountable or it's really unlikely that you'll be held accountable, you don't really follow the rules.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Right. You're more likely to not follow the rules.

[Amy Nelson]

Right, right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

And I mean, let's talk about civil forfeiture, which I didn't even know was allowed. I mean, the fact that they can take away all your money without you being convicted of a single crime is mind blowing to me.

[Amy Nelson]

It's mind blowing. And one of the things that's hardest about civil forfeiture and that they should absolutely reform if they still have to have this horrible practice, is that because it's money and it's an asset, that's the defendant. There is no due process. When they seized our money, we actually had no forum to fight to get it back for two years. For most people, that's the end of the game. Right. And think about it this way. Civil forfeiture is typically used against folks of color or immigrants. And the impact of it is extraordinary. Like, if they say they pulled you over and you had a dime bag of weed, they could take your entire car because the car is being used in criminal activity. Then you can't go to work or you can't go to school. Then what?

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, I talk about that a lot. It almost pushes you back into a life of crime or even more to a life of crime. Right. Even when.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Like a bag of weed or. Yeah, yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And I know you've highlighted that a lot when very few people do about how the reforms that we need, because the system we've created makes. Exacerbates criminal activity, exacerbates poverty. Right. Like. And so. And why do we want that outcome? It's absurd. It doesn't make any sense.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So has this become a big part of your sort of what you want to do is reform the system and starting with civil fortresses, is that like the top of your list and what you think should be reformed?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, I have a bigger goal, but yes. No, I am actually working on legal strategy now, and I work with a lot of people who are facing criminal allegations, but also kind of on the broader picture. My take on all of this after experiencing this is that I believe that most criminal activity should be handled at the state level because it's much less politicized, much less weaponized, and you look at things like the prosecution of Diddy in New York, like the feds charged him with kind of like a very hard to prove crime, whereas New York State could have charged him and probably imposed a much more severe sentence for sexual assault. And I think that we should use state criminal laws. We don't have to have thousands of federal criminal laws to capture this. It doesn't make sense.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Is that your big plan?

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, it is like it does. We've passed thousands of federal criminal laws in the past 20 years and most of them people don't even know their laws. And I just don't see the point of it. It's incredibly costly. Right. And I think that the states are perfectly capable of handling that. But I also think we should abolish civil forfeiture. Yeah, that's a tough one. The civil forfeiture is a tough one because, and I didn't know this civil forfeiture, the assets seized fund, law enforcement, right.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

They're used for training. And if, yeah, let's say they walk into a house that has $100,000 from drug money, that money then can be used to help with training and utilization equipment and even salaries and overtime and all of it.

[Amy Nelson]

I mean, like I read a statistic that a lot of like local police departments, 50% of their budget is funded by civil forfeiture. So they have to keep seizing or they'll lose their budget. Right. Like they're, you know, so that's a very bad incentive. Like we.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So yeah, it's a terrible incentive. Yeah, absolutely.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That is so crazy. Wow. Are you, is a riveter back? Is it happening?

[Amy Nelson]

Is it so the riveter. Like I don't, we don't have the co working spaces anymore because we lost them all during the pandemic. But we have, have a large online community and we do pop up events around the country. But I work with women who are facing inflection points and pivoting from corporate America to working on their own. Just like I deal with people facing the inflection point of allegations or crisis. And I know, I think we're all facing an inflection point. The world is wild right now.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

So wild. And you're going to go on your first TEDx talk, is that right?

[Amy Nelson]

I saw that. I'm giving a TEDx talk in Columbus, Ohio, where I live. Live. And I'm telling the story.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah, you're going to do so well.

[Amy Nelson]

Thank you.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

You're such a good storyteller. You really are. Is there a part of you that feels that this was not for nothing, that now you are a voice for so many people out there.

[Amy Nelson]

And I think it is. I think it's incumbent on all of us to use the pain that we go through to help other people. And so while I wish I hadn't gone through this, I will never not use it to try to help other people.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That's great. How old are your kids now?

[Amy Nelson]

My Girls are now 11, 9, 8, and 6. And this is. And that is. That is actually, like, one of the hardest things. And I think about this every single day that, you know, I've had to fight this battle while my kids are growing up, and I'll never get this time back. And so, on the one hand, I think it's made me be really intentional about my presence, about being able to hold the. And, like, fear and joy, sadness and hope. On the other hand, it pisses me off like this. My youngest was 8 months old when this started, so she has never known me not fighting this battle.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

But at the same time, I mean, what an amazing symbol of strength and courage that you are for them.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. And my mother always makes a joke because she has to find something funny in it. She's like, they'll have great college essays.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

That's right. Let me tell you about that time my dad almost went to prison.

[Amy Nelson]

Yeah. So, you know, I mean. But yes. And they. It's interesting. Some people would probably disagree with how much my children know, but this is their story, too.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Do they know everything then or. They know a lot?

[Amy Nelson]

They know everything.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

I am a big believer in transparency and sharing it and. Yeah. Because kids know. At the end of the day, they know that your parent. They know when their parents are going through something.

[Amy Nelson]

They do. And it's their story, too.

[Theo Vaughn]

Yeah.

[Amy Nelson]

And I want them. Maybe they don't understand all of it now, but when they grow up, they will read everything and they will listen to everything. And I want them to know that they were included in this journey. And I talked to them, and we didn't hide anything. And it's. You know, it's. It's. Kids say the smartest things. Right. Like, my kids do not understand why the lawyers doing this to our family won't stop being mean. And they ask, what do their kids think? And I think that's an interesting question.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah. I'm assuming you don't buy goods from Amazon anymore.

[Amy Nelson]

No.

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Yeah. I think that's a great question. Yeah. Well, Amy, you are so inspirational. Your story is bananas, really crazy. And I have to say that the first time it was ever. Your name was sent to me by somebody that I interviewed, Justin Bufferni. He's a friend of yours, and he said that I should interview you. And. And he just sent me your TikTok account. And I remember seeing one of the biggest, one of the videos that had the most views. And I hate to admit it, but my initial reaction, I was like, ugh, there has to be some guilt there, right? There has to be. Because how is it possible that they've been going through all of this and that there is no guilt there? And I have no problems with guilt and people have done bad things because this is what the podcast is about. But then to find out that sort of how I know you guys are still going through the appeal process, but how the federal government had to vacate, vacate. And to hear your whole story in the Civil Fortune and everything your family had to go through is really crazy. There's no other way of saying it. It's just insane. And your strength throughout all of it, and the fact that you managed to stay married through all of it, and I'm sure in many ways it brought you guys together even more. So thank you so much for coming here and sharing your story.

[Amy Nelson]

Thank you so much for having me. Mariana,

[Mariana Van Zeller]

Take a second to subscribe like or leave a review on YouTube.com mariannavanzeller or wherever you're listening to this podcast, the Hidden Third, and share it with your friends. This show does doesn't have a marketing budget behind it. It grows because of people like you. And this means everything to me. So thank you so much. Obrigad.