PORTAGE, Mich. — The United States Department of Justice said Wednesday that a judge sentenced Geoffrey Talsma of Portage to 16 years in prison.
Talsma pleaded guilty in February to mail fraud and aggravated identity theft.
READ MORE: Portage man pleads guilty to defrauding Amazon’s textbook program
As part of his sentence, Talsma also must pay $3,227,347.82 in restitution to Amazon.
Court documents show Talsma defrauded Amazon from January 2016 to March 2021.
Talsma is accused of creating numerous Amazon accounts and email accounts to rent textbooks and then sell them for a profit, instead of returning them or paying the agreed upon buy-out price.
According to court documents, Talsma hid the fraud by recruiting and paying unwitting people to accept shipments of stolen textbooks at their homes, so Amazon would not detect a pattern of large volumes of books going to locations associated with him.
Court documents show Talsma also ordered rental textbooks in the names of unwitting people, then pretended to be them when calling Amazon to say he never got the textbooks.
He is the last of four defendants to be sentenced in the mail fraud scheme. The other three are as follows:
- Lovedeep Dhanoa, Portage: 15 months in prison
- Paul Larson, Kalamazoo: six months in prison
- Gregory Gleesing, Portage: three years of probation, including four months of home detention
“For years, Talsma and others enriched themselves by targeting an Amazon program designed to help students save money,” said James Tarasca, FBI Special Agent. “Mr. Talsma’s sentence sends a strong message that the FBI is committed to working with corporations and our law enforcement counterparts to root out this type of fraud and to hold those who participate in these schemes accountable for their criminal behavior.”
A spokesperson for Amazon gave FOX 17 the following statement regarding Talsma's sentencing:
"Amazon has zero tolerance for fraud and in 2021 alone, invested over $900 million globally and employed more than 12,000 people, including machine learning scientists, software developers and expert investigators, to protect our store and our customers from fraud and other forms of abuse. In addition to these efforts, Amazon appreciates law enforcement acting on our referral and thoroughly pursuing this case."
