The Amazon Prime logo is displayed on Amazon delivery trucks in Richmond, California, June 21, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Department of Justice officials on Tuesday charged members or associates of an Armenian organized crime ring with stealing more than $83 million worth of cargo from Amazon by posing as legitimate truck drivers and siphoning off goods destined for the company’s warehouses.
Since at least 2021, at least four people linked to the crime ring carried out a scheme across California to steal truckloads of merchandise, ranging from smart TVs and GE icemakers to SharkNinja vacuums and air fryers, the DOJ alleged.
“At present, Amazon is plagued by recurring thefts of its shipments, which is commonly referred to as ‘cargo theft,'” the complaint says.
Amazon has ramped up its efforts to track and shut down fraudulent, deceptive and illegal activities on its sprawling online store. Eliminating stolen goods is particularly challenging. CNBC reported in 2023 that Amazon suspended dozens of third-party merchants it alleged were selling stolen goods, though many of those sellers claimed they were unknowingly caught in the scheme, putting their businesses at risk of survival.
Amazon isn’t the only retailer afflicted by cargo theft. Experts told CNBC cargo theft-related losses are estimated at close to $1 billion or more a year.
In its complaint, the DOJ said the alleged fraudsters operated four transport carriers — AK Transportation, NBA Holdings, Belman Transport and Markos Transportation — that would obtain contracted freight routes from Amazon Relay, an application used by truckers to obtain work, also referred to as loads.
Each trucker is assigned a load for pickup from a manufacturer’s warehouse to be dropped off at an Amazon facility. Instead, the groups would divert from their designated routes, take a portion of the goods off the trucks and resell them or gift them to associates, prosecutors allege.
In some cases, the “self-styled carriers” would complete their deliveries at an Amazon warehouse several days after they were expected to show up, according to the complaint.
DOJ officials seized the alleged fraudsters’ iPhones and found photos and videos of warehouses lined with boxes of crockpots, Keurig coffee machines, keratin shampoo, Weber grills and other goods.
Amazon teams cooperated with DOJ officials in their investigation, including sharing information about the stolen goods, and details of the alleged fraudsters’ accounts on its online marketplace.
Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
DOJ officials linked the defendants to a litany of other alleged crimes, including attempted murder, kidnapping, illegal firearm possession and health-care fraud. Several of the 13 defendants are expected to appear in a Los Angeles district court on Tuesday and Wednesday, while one of the defendants appeared in a court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Tuesday and was detained.
The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.
Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.
Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.
But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.
“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.
AI has made it all practical.
“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”
Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.
“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”
Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.
Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.
But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.
Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, gestures during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
CoreWeave shares popped 19% after announcing a $2 billion debt offering.
The renter of artificial intelligence data centers powered by Nvidia chips said it had priced the notes at 9.25%, with a June 2030 maturity date. The deal represents a $500 million increase from its initial announcement.
CoreWeave said it plans to use the capital to pay off outstanding debt. The company confirmed to CNBC that the debt offering was five times oversubscribed.
In its first-quarter earnings report last week, CoreWeave said that it raised a total of $17.2 billion in equity and debt “to support its strategy to drive the next generation of cloud computing for the future of AI.” The company topped revenues expectations but posted wider-than-expected net loss and said it plans to spend big on capital expenditures to support infrastructure demand.
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During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans after some investors cast doubt on its debt, and demand durability. He said the company is meeting “demand signals” from some of its major clients.
In a call with analysts, CoreWeave said it has no debt maturities until 2028 other than payments related to vendor financing and “self-amortizing debt through committed contract payments.” The company said it had about $3.8 billion in current debt and $4.9 billion in non-current debt at the end of the quarter.
A year ago, CoreWeave announced that it had raised $7.5 billion in debt, led by Blackstone and Magnetar, to more heavily invest in its cloud data centers. CoreWeave said in its IPO prospectus that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”
CoreWeave counts Nvidia and Microsoft among its biggest customers and has signed two seperate deals with OpenAI, totaling nearly $16 billion.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.
“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”
Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmartwarned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”
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Targetsaid Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depotsaid it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.
Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.
Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.
“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.