Amy Nelson

Her Story Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Sam and Today I am interviewing my podcast partner and dear friend, Amy Nelson, who has gone through big public turmoil and she was brave enough to do this interview with me today so that we can all learn from it. But this is an ongoing legal case, so there are certain topics that were out of bounds. And of course this is part one. There will be a part two of the Amy Nelson's Story, but it won't be coming next week. It will be

coming one Part two unfold. So Amy, thank you for sharing your story with us today. Thank you. I will try my best to do it. It's hard to talk about, as you know, so Amy, give us a sense of what your life was like just two and a half years ago. It was fun, so I was living in Seattle with my husband Carl, and my four daughters, Sloan, Reese, Merritt, and Holland. I think Sloan would have been five then five, and Holland was a baby, right she wasn't even walking,

um still breastfeeding. I was scaling my company, the Riveter. I think we had about a hundred employees at that point. We had gone from an idea to a hundred employees in about thirty months, which was wild and hard but exhilarating. I was always on a plane criss crossing the country from Seattle for to open new riveters. We were in six states. I was, you know, writing a column for Ink. It was a lot. So it sounds like your life was a lot of fun. My life was a lot

of fun. I mean it was hard, but it was like hard of my by my own making, right, Like I was the one who was like, oh, I want to start a company, I want to have four kids, I want to do all of this crazy stuff all at once, right, So it was I mean, it was magical. Like I remember thinking at my forty birthday, which was an early like how did I get this lucky? Okay? And then in April of the pandemic had just begun a month or two earlier, and your entire world changed.

What happened. So on the morning of April two, which was about from from my family, like two and a half, three weeks into the pandemic, at around six in the morning, there was a knock on our door, and of course I was like, who the hell is that at my door at six in the morning. And we have we had a glass door. We live in a busy street and had a glass door. We just bought our house.

It was the first house we bought. We bought it in and I go to the door and there's a woman and a man, and I kind of and I was I had Holland on a hip and her diaper, she's just woken up. And I looked out the door and I was like, who are these people? And then the woman flashed a bed and it said FBI. And I opened the door and they said we're here to talk to your husband, Carlton Nelson, and I said okay, and I yelled for Carl and he came over. And I looked at Carl and he looked at the agents.

And I'm a lawyer, Sam, as you know, I practiced law for a decade and I said to my husband and go, Carl, you cannot talk to these people without a lawyer, like no matter what. And I was just like public service announcement. Law enforcement never wants to talk to you like on a friendly basis. Get a lawyer, no matter what. People feel like, if they get a lawyer, it means they've done something wrong. It doesn't. A lawyer protects her interests. But my husband said, I'm just I'm

fine to talk to them for a minute. So he took them upstairs and you talked to them, and they asked him a few questions. And they asked him if you knew about this business entity and he said, you know, I know of it, but I don't know a lot about it. And he said, well, this is your chance to to to back up. This is your chance to save yourself. We know everything. And my husband was like what, And then he said, you know what, I need to

talk to my lawyer. And they left. And then but before they left, they handed him a couple of letters telling him he was the target of a federal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia related to his former employment at Amazon Web Services, and that started everything. What had Carl been doing at Amazon? Carl worked at Amazon

Web Services, which is Amazon's division that builds the Internet. Really, the Internet lives in these big warehouses called data centers, and they're full of the the servers that power the Internet. Amazon Web Services powers of the Internet. So like huge company, right, And my husband started at Amazon Web Services, and it was about five thousand employees, very small, and he spent seven years there. Their revenue grew like a hundred x

or something in that time, something crazy um. And he worked in real estate, so he helped the company and the people who made the di visions. He helped them figure out like if they should buy a piece of land to build a data center, or if they should work with a developer to lease data center space. So he worked on that stuff. How did you and Carl meet? Carl and I met in I had moved to Minneapolis from New York, which is like a big move for me. I was thirty one and wanted to move back to

the Midwest where I grew up. And I met this wonderful woman named Molly sam who you know. And she was also a lawyer and had lived in New York and we were chatting and like the first day we met, she was like, you know, you just you need to meet my older brother's best friend. And I was like why. She's like, you guys, will just I just I can't explain it, but you need to meet him. And she introduced us, and that's my husband, you know, Like we

just we met for the first time in September. We went out for drinks and then we just we were always together after that. What did you love about him? He's brilliant, He's so kind and generous, kindest, most loyal person you'd ever meet. He is so smart, are so ambitious, and he's like we just share the same values, right. We both were people who wanted to live a big life, and like felt that we could both live our big lives, come together and build something great. But both do really

big things on our own. And I'll say that I think like for a woman to find a partner like that, like it's not the dynamic you're told that you're going to have in America, right, And like that was just I mean, Carl has supported me and every big thing I've done and like pushed me to do it, not just supported me. But been like, of course you can

do this. I remember when I started the riveter, he said, if you're going to take the bats swinging as hard as you can, right, and like that's just that's his personality. So the FBI comes to your door. And what happened after that? When did you realize this is not a

one day thing. I realized it immediately. This is where fortunate you're a lawyer, and like I will say, every step of every day, like, I don't think we would have survived this far if I wasn't a lawyer, because we had access to other lawyers that I could call and get advice from. I am a trained litigator and trained to fight, and trained to find the facts, you know, all of these things. But he got a letter saying

he was a target of a federal investigation. And when you're under federal investigation, you can be a target, a subject, or witness. It's all very form like, it's very formal. There's like this whole there's this whole prosecutorial industry in this country that I didn't even know about. I don't say that fliquantly, like it is big business. And I told this lawyer that I used to work with in New York. I was He's like, read the letter to me, and I read it, and they're like, Carl's a target.

And generally when you get a target letter, you are indicted for a federal crime within sixty days. They think you committed a crime and it's going And so we hired a lawyer. And I will tell you the first law firm that we hired fired Carl after two weeks because they represented Amazon and other matters, which was like, that was terrifying and traumatic, and we wasted a lot of money. We hired great lawyers. And I will also say that Carl immediately wanted to talk to Amazon because

he was like, what is going on here? Like he could not understand this. So he has tried to speak to Amazon directly multiple times over the past two years. Nothing to hide. Tell us, in layman's terms, what this case is about, and what it is that Carl has been accused of. Amazon accused my husband of a very specific crime called private sector honest services fraud. It is

depriving your private employer of your quote honest services. So they allege that my husband steered data center leases to a certain developer in exchange for kickback payments, so that is their accusation. Um, they made it. I now know in tandem with a group called IPI, which is a billionaire investment fund led by Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, a lot of billionaires. I PI and Amazon accused my husband of

this crime to the FBI. That's the allegation. And I will say it too because I think it's important and I always say this, you said this case. The government has never charged my husband. It's like there is no criminal case. There's just allegation. So over two years in there's just allegations. So every day do you wake up hoping he'll just be charged with something so life can move on. I hope it ends. I hope that. I mean, I've always hoped that the the Amazon would speak to him directly.

It is surprising to me that the company would choose to spend millions of dollars on lawyers rather than speak directly to an employee that worked for them for seven and a half years and has nothing to hide. That's frustrating to me endlessly. Seattle is a small community and we know a lot of the people at Amazon, so talk to us about the financial burden this has cast on your family. Amazon took your money. It feels like

Amazon took our money. But I'll just go to the basics of this because I didn't understand this the day the FBI came to our house in April. The other letter they handed my husband said we intend to see these bank accounts from you, and I was like, what the hell is this? Like, they're just going to take our money. And there's a practice in America called civil forfeiture where law enforcement authorities can seize your money on the suspicion of a crime. They do not have to

prove a crime. They do not have to charge you with a crime. They can take your money and say your money as a crime, and then you have to hire lawyers to fight to get it back. In May, so um, a month and a half after the FBI came, the federal government on a random Tuesday, took all of the money out of our bank accounts, every dollar. And I think, I mean, I went from like, well, they also they took it from our lawyer's client trust account.

And you know, I didn't know it at the time, but this is a prosecutorial tool to get you to plead guilty. Percent of people who are accused of a federal crime, plead guilty. We don't really have a jury system in America. We have a plead guilty system. And there are certain things prosecutors can do when you don't plead guilty you to get you to plead guilty. One of them is lead you penniless. So not only can you not feed your family, you cannot defend yourself in court.

So they took all of our money. And I will say after the two months after they took all of our money, Amazon, knowing the government had taken all of our money based on their accusations, Amazon then sued my husband. I mean, it's it's very cruel for what. Oh, they have student my husband for like ten things so Rico, which is like a criminal gang. Right, the Rico statute

was for the mafia so Rico, which with racketeering. And when you when you choose someone a rico, it's basically a civil way for like you or I Sam to say someone committed a crime. So same thing private sector on his services road. They also alleged that my husband, my husband violated federal antitrust laws. They said he rigged land prices. I mean, my husband's great, but I don't think that any single human could rig land prices. So Amy, what exactly happened when your money was taken? I mean,

how does a family of six survive that? We're really lucky? I guess is the is the way, and I shouldn't feel that way. I feel lucky that we have survived, even though the money never should have been taken. I mean very specifically, after the government came on April twod we opened another bank account and started putting our earnings in that new bank accounts. So they didn't get that one bank account. They took literally everything else. Carl was

able to work. He was a very successful consultant in real estate development at the time, and he was able to work until August when the accusations became very public. So we had some money coming in. I had my riveter salary for a while, and then we started selling things. We liquidated retirement, we sold our car, and then eventually I realized in October of that we needed to sell our house quickly. What was that decision like for you? I,

you know, I just have kept moving. It's hard, it's hard, like to stop and think about it, but like that was the house I thought my girls would grow weapon. We worked so hard for the domb payment for that house. And at that point you'd also become kind of a very well known person in Seattle. You're one of the most high profile entrepreneurs there. You'd added so many jobs to the economy, and then almost overnight, you're selling a home and basically saying goodbye to a life that you'd

created in this city. Yeah, and we just left, like we're really fortunate. I had a good friend who had helped us buy the house, and I called her and she knew what we were going through, and I said, we have to sell this and like I'm not capable of like doing anything, and um so we had just like did everything. You know. We got movers and paying for the movers was hard, right, Like they're all these things, Like we had to find a way to pay for the movers, which is a lot of money, and we

put our stuff in storage. I had to find someone to take our dog. But we we just and we had some good friends. But we left Seattle in our minivan with like five backs and where do you go? It was raining? Um So, I mean that was kind of the big question. I was like, where do we go because it was the pandemic and we have four kids,

poor babies, and my dad. You know, I wanted to go home to Ohio, but my dad had a kidney transplant in April, about two weeks after everything started for us, and so my dad, as a kidney transplant recipient, had to be so so careful with COVID, so we couldn't. We literally just couldn't go to Ohio. My sister lived in San Francisco, and I just didn't see how we could stay there for a long time with her. My brother in law lived in a condo in Chicago, so

that was out. And we were really luck because Carl's dad and step mom lived in Honolulu, so we could stay with them. So we drove to California and stayed with my sister for a month in her basement, and then we flew to Honolulu. At the height of the Second Wave. I put all my kids on a plane, which was really scary. There were ten people on the plane. I mean, it was when nobody was going anywhere. And we flew to Honolulu and we stayed there until August.

So we were there from November of until August, and then you returned to Columbus, Ohio. We did. We returned to Columbus, Ohio. You know, I think we would have stayed in Honolulu, maybe a little bit longer. But I took on a role to help launch a company in New York and so, and we desperately needed that money, and so it was really I was commuting between Honolulu and New York for a few months, which was impossible

to your job at sax Works. So we went to Ohio and I was able to fly to New York every Monday to Thursday while I was launching the company A quick break, so Amy and thinking about the girls. How disruptive has this been to their lives? How have you shielded them from all of this? So, you know, Sam, it's really interesting. They are now seven, five, four and two.

So this has been going on for the majority of my baby's life, right, and then my rest is about to have her third birthday, with this going on until turns six. I know that I haven't shielded it from them completely. It's impossible. People always tell me I'm handling this with such grace, but I'm not. It's ugly, it's messy,

it's scary. But I read a lot of books when I was a kid, and I read a lot of books growing up in my twenties and thirties, and I love adventure stories, and so I tried to treat it like an adventure with the kids. They got to see all these different places and go on all these big adventures. And we've tried to really free meant like that, and I think it's mostly worked. How do you mom on

the days when you just feel hopeless? The mothering has saved me because you know, you've got these four little girls, and like, I have these four little girls, and so I've always felt that, like if our life is over, me and girl, like they could still have a life. So I had to give them everything and like all the love I had. Also, when we got back to Ohio, I had my parents, and on the hardest days, my parents could help. How has this change your friendships and

your relationships? Have you lost friends and gone closer to others? What does this kind of crisis due to those relationships you realize who your friends are. That's the easiest way to put it, Like, um, friendship is not something that we have when it's just convenient, like you have to be a friend, and hard times too and my friends have been remarkable like you, I mean like you basically some days just like forced to me to just do

things right, which is a good friend. But I've lost some friends, and I definitely know there are people who there are a lot of people in the world who, when someone is accused of the crime, think they committed it. And I know that Amazon knows that. So let's go back to that for a minute. Was there ever a time when you doubted your husband's innocence, even in the very beginning? Absolutely not. No, my husband would never do anything he thought was illegal. So where is everything today?

What's next? Well, it's interesting, Sam, because the Amazon civil case where Amazon sued my husband was in discovery. So that means, for the first time in years, my husband's lawyers and my husband are seeing all of the documents around Amazon's allegations, including the documents that they shared with the Department of Justice in their effort to get Carl

charged with a crime. So that's in discovery, and soon Carl's lawyers will depose, which means kind of like interview under oath, all of the Amazon executives that are accusing my husband of a crime. And then I don't know what's happening with the government investigation, you don't really get insight into that. Carl's never been charged with a crime. But with the civil forfeiture yesterday, we learned that we

were getting almost all of our money back. So twenty one months after the government took it, and after you know, we sold everything and we've tried to survive and navigate, paying for lawyers to defend ourselves against Amazon, we're getting the money back. And when is that going to hit your account? I know that the government filed emotion that they were giving it back to us, and then the judge has to, I think, sign off on the motion and then we call the U. S. Marshal Service who

has our money, and get it back. Amy. I can't help but think this is uncanny timing because just earlier this week you launched a go fund Me campaign to pay for your family's legal bills, which, if mounted, I don't even know how much a month you're spending in legal bills right now, between forty and fifty dollars. It's shocking. So it's not surprising that of people plead guilty when there's a forfeiture, because I mean, who could afford that nobody.

And I will say, there, there weren't many months we've been spending that much. But now to defend ourselves. I'm not in the Amazon all sup. But for Carl to defend himself against Amazon, it's that much. And I will say, you know, Amazon's lawyers are around a thousand dollars an hour.

They use a very big fancy law firm called Gibson Done, who Facebook hires and Apple hires all the big tech companies higher and their lawyers are a thousand dollars an hour and they have like five lawyers on every call. So Amazon is spending untold millions of dollars on this.

So earlier this week he launched a go fund me campaign and how many people have contributed to that Almost three hundred, which is like, you know, I feel like Amazon has been so loud and calling my husband a criminal for so many years that I feel like people just assume he is, or people assume he's been charged with a crime when he hasn't. And so for all of these people some I know, some I don't, to

support him is like, it's amazing. Do you think that the timing of getting your money back like there had to be an association with you know, the government or Amazon seeing the go fund me campaign, I don't, I don't know. So really what happened And one of the reasons we launched to go fund me is the civil forfeiture. They took the money and we've never been able to fight to get it back, and it was finally time for us to litigate with the government on our money

and have discovery. So we have been able to depose the FBI agents who came to our house and investigated my husband. And when we finally have that opportunity, the government settled with us rather than go through that process. And I had wanted to go fund of me because this was now like another lawsuit we had to fight. Right when your money is taken, you have to pay lawyers to fight to get it back, and so it's finally our opportunity to fight to get it back, and

they settled. So what will happen now to the go fund me money. It will go directly to our law firm. I mean we you know, we have spent an enormous amount of lawyers and we will continue to and even though our money is returned, that could easily be enough entirely by lawyers fees as well, so you get the money back. But that's only a very small part of the pain that you've experienced. It's affected your friendships, your marriage, I'm sure your family. What's the impact been on your career.

So I'll start by saying that the investors and the Riveter have been amazingly supportive, and I am forever grateful. I'm lucky because a lot of people could have chosen not to be the Riveter. If you don't know, I had raised thirty million dollars from my company and we weren't in real life company, so we weathered a traumatic pandemic as well. But we have survived somehow. But you know, during the pendency of all this, I had to seek

other employments. I had to make more money, and you know, I had some people who were willing to take me on to launch things, and I had other people who, when they found out about what was going on with my husband, attached to me to it and refused to hire me because of it. You know. Also, like if you google me, everything I've ever done in my life is not first. Now this is first. This is part of our story. It's the story people learn first now.

And you know, I think for about a year, right, Sam, I didn't say anything about it, and then there was a lot of press and then I was like, you know what, I have to own this. I think there's power of the accusers. If the accused are silent. I think if you speak out, you have a better chance. I imagine a lot of people in her situation would have said, Okay, we need at least one breadwinner we can count on for a while. Um, so we don't want to do anything to jeopardize you know, Amy's career.

Was there a lot of thought put into you know, the risks of speaking out, or did one day you just decide I have to speak out. So there's a lot of thought put into me not speaking out because of the things you just said, I needed to be the breadwinner, etcetera. But the government took one of my bank accounts too, because we had paid lawyers through my bank account, and so they said that I laundered money

for Carl. So it all sounds so anyway, um, and so I was named in the forfeiture actions and so I became a part of it, and so that choice was taken from me. Whether that was an intentional choice by the government to bring me into it to hurt my family further, or whether it was just happenstance. I don't know, but you know, eventually, like I reached a point where I thought, you know, I'm I'm good enough at what I do that I can consult, I can

make money for my family. But the most important thing for me is that my husband is home with us, his freedom. My little girls need their dad. So what does that look like today, his future freedom or his chances that clearing this up and just moving on. I mean, I don't know. You know, we've gotten in civil discovery. Our lawyers have seen the communications between Amazon and the government, and I can tell you that Amazon has met with the government at least eighty nine times to lobby the

government to charge my husband with a crime. That feels terrifying. It also feels like if they've been trying to do this for two years and my husband hasn't been charged with the crime, Like what is what does their allegation look like? I know that we will fight until we can't fight anymore. That if Carl is charged with the crime, we will take it to trial and we will just keep trying. Are there any risks to speaking out? Do you ever worry about poking a bear? Amazon being the bear?

So it's funny. Carl and I were talking about this a long time ago, and I was like, I don't want to make them quote the quote them mad, whether that's Amazon, Department of Justice, anybody, I don't know. And Carl said, they're already mad. They're already mad. Like and Amazon built a narrative and controlled a narrative. I'm a storyteller.

Amazon built a narrative. They built a narrative to the Department of Justice, they built a narrative and filing a public complaint in a court of law that anybody can read in Most reporters will read the allegations and repeat them in their stories. And so I think the only way to tell Carl's story is to tell Carl's story and to tell our family story. And I also I believe in justice and I believe in fairness. It's been a north star in my life. I've been involved in

politics since I was a kid. I was interning at the Ohio Statehouse and I was in high school. I worked for Jimmy Carter. I was on Obama's National Finance Committee, Like, justice is important to me, and this has really challenged my core beliefs. Really, the civil forfeiture piece of it did right, because it's like, don't take away our ability to fight, Like you can't deem money guilty if someone hasn't even been charged, let alone tried for a crime.

And so speaking out too has allowed me to start thinking of how I can lobby for change for others and now a quick break. You know, I've had a front row seat to what you've been going through and all of the accusations and all these things, but it's still hard for me to make hads or tails of all of it. What would have happened if Amy Nelson was not an attorney? Where would this case be today?

I don't know. And I'm not saying I'm not like some like magic maker, but I can say that trying to help somebody who was accused understand the accusations, just that, just that part helping my husband understand the accusations, because he was like, what the hell is happening? Right? Like you have to generally pay a lawyer lots and lots of money to understand the accusations, right, and then you know, also like gathering facts and all of these different things

that's money. And so the fact that he had someone who could help him do those things I think was helpful. And also I was able to understand and assess the risks and say I stand with you and I support you in fighting because I will tell you, Sam, there were a lot of people who gave the advice to my husband, just plead guilty, even if you don't didn't commit a crime, to get it over with because you're never going to beat him, you can't afford it. Just

plead guilty. And that to me was like shocking. But that is a lot of the advice given because the pro sus is insane. Well, and just watching you go through this, I mean, it doesn't seem like such bad advice. I mean, if there was a way to speed this up and make it go away and be over it does feel like for the last two years you've been living in a sort of prison. Yeah, and then that's

by design, right, it's by design. But but listen, like, if Carl plied guilty, hey, he didn't commit a crime, and he if it's like there's a bunch of people accused, So if he pleads guilty, then all the other people I have to deal with the repercussions of his guilty plea. If that makes sense. I want to talk about that because I remember at one time hearing about the other people who are accused. And you happen to have a

very robust income going into this. But what if you Amy had been a stay at home parent who had given up your career. Where would the Nelson family be today? We'd be in trouble, right, And that's the you know, it's my parents are amazing, and my mother always worked. And when I was sixteen years old, my father lost his job and I remember thinking, when I was sixteen, if my mother didn't work, we would be in so much trouble. And then that day I knew that I

would always work. And that's my life story and that you know, that impacted me in that way, and I'm grateful and lucky for it. But there are other people involved in this that don't have that. It's got to be really, really hard. How is this experience? I mean, you're obviously still in the thick of it, but how

do you think it's changed you? I think, listen, like, there are a lot of things like, I know how fragile life is, and I didn't before in this way, but like, whatever you thought your life was could literally go away in an instant, And I know that. I'm so fortunate that I didn't learn that lesson until I

was forty. But I think, like there are some really crappy things like sam as you know, in June of the government executed a search warrant in our house with four armed FBI agents that brought guns into my house and my little girls were there. I don't feel safe. So you have a little bit of PTSD from that experience, I would say a lot. Actually, I've been diagnosed with trauma. It's actually called continuous trauma syndrome because the threat is

not gone. Because one other tactic that prosecutors can use when someone doesn't plead guilty of a crime is to the threat of arresting them in their home. They do it a lot. So they come and arrest you in your home, usually before dawn, and drag you out with guns in front of your kids. They threatened to do that for many months, and so I started waking the girls up at five am and taking them out of the house to a park for months when we were

still in Seattle. It's unthinkable, you know, I have to say, like, listen, these allegations are serious. Carl takes them seriously. I take them seriously like he's, you know, more than willing to defend himself if given the opportunity to do so. But you realize a lot of this, like the criminal justice system is it seems in some ways like a chess game, right Like, do we need to be spending resources on like tactical military engagements to arrest people because they won't

be guilty? Or can they just walk in, you know, and accept and accept the charges like right like? And the trauma it brings on children and loved ones? Is that necessary? Is that who we are? Is that what we want as a country? Is that is that important to us? When was the last time you felt just truly happy? There have been moments, right like, you learn to live, you get used to things, right like, this

thing is my baseline. Now. We found out yesterday all of our funds were being returned, and like Sam, I didn't feel peace. I didn't feel I didn't feel anything like, which I'm like, what is wrong with me? I just thought, okay, one battle, one battle, one battle. There's more to fight, so Amy, thank you for being on our show, your show, and for sharing your story. As I mentioned earlier in the show, part two will come, but it won't come for a while until we know how this all unfolds.

And in the meantime, obviously I am rooting for you, and I know that our listeners are too. Thank you, Sam, I love you. Thanks for being my friend, Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate it if you leave her review wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with us on social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter at The Riveter dot c O and Sam's company,

park Place Payments at park place Payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective Blue Burns