Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
Speaker 1: What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. This is a
Speaker 1: show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
Speaker 1: personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
Speaker 1: and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every
Speaker 1: Thursday or join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's
Speaker 1: Her Story Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Sam and Today
Speaker 1: I am interviewing my podcast partner and dear friend, Amy Nelson,
Speaker 1: who has gone through big public turmoil and she was
Speaker 1: brave enough to do this interview with me today so
Speaker 1: that we can all learn from it. But this is
Speaker 1: an ongoing legal case, so there are certain topics that
Speaker 1: were out of bounds. And of course this is part one.
Speaker 1: There will be a part two of the Amy Nelson's Story,
Speaker 1: but it won't be coming next week. It will be
Speaker 1: coming one Part two unfold. So Amy, thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing your story with us today. Thank you. I will
Speaker 1: try my best to do it. It's hard to talk about,
Speaker 1: as you know, so Amy, give us a sense of
Speaker 1: what your life was like just two and a half
Speaker 1: years ago. It was fun, so I was living in
Speaker 1: Seattle with my husband Carl, and my four daughters, Sloan, Reese, Merritt,
Speaker 1: and Holland. I think Sloan would have been five then five,
Speaker 1: and Holland was a baby, right she wasn't even walking,
Speaker 1: um still breastfeeding. I was scaling my company, the Riveter.
Speaker 1: I think we had about a hundred employees at that point.
Speaker 1: We had gone from an idea to a hundred employees
Speaker 1: in about thirty months, which was wild and hard but exhilarating.
Speaker 1: I was always on a plane criss crossing the country
Speaker 1: from Seattle for to open new riveters. We were in
Speaker 1: six states. I was, you know, writing a column for Ink.
Speaker 1: It was a lot. So it sounds like your life
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. My life was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I mean it was hard, but it was
Speaker 1: like hard of my by my own making, right, Like
Speaker 1: I was the one who was like, oh, I want
Speaker 1: to start a company, I want to have four kids,
Speaker 1: I want to do all of this crazy stuff all
Speaker 1: at once, right, So it was I mean, it was magical.
Speaker 1: Like I remember thinking at my forty birthday, which was
Speaker 1: an early like how did I get this lucky? Okay?
Speaker 1: And then in April of the pandemic had just begun
Speaker 1: a month or two earlier, and your entire world changed.
Speaker 1: What happened. So on the morning of April two, which
Speaker 1: was about from from my family, like two and a half,
Speaker 1: three weeks into the pandemic, at around six in the morning,
Speaker 1: there was a knock on our door, and of course
Speaker 1: I was like, who the hell is that at my
Speaker 1: door at six in the morning. And we have we
Speaker 1: had a glass door. We live in a busy street
Speaker 1: and had a glass door. We just bought our house.
Speaker 1: It was the first house we bought. We bought it
Speaker 1: in and I go to the door and there's a
Speaker 1: woman and a man, and I kind of and I
Speaker 1: was I had Holland on a hip and her diaper,
Speaker 1: she's just woken up. And I looked out the door
Speaker 1: and I was like, who are these people? And then
Speaker 1: the woman flashed a bed and it said FBI. And
Speaker 1: I opened the door and they said we're here to
Speaker 1: talk to your husband, Carlton Nelson, and I said okay,
Speaker 1: and I yelled for Carl and he came over. And
Speaker 1: I looked at Carl and he looked at the agents.
Speaker 1: And I'm a lawyer, Sam, as you know, I practiced
Speaker 1: law for a decade and I said to my husband
Speaker 1: and go, Carl, you cannot talk to these people without
Speaker 1: a lawyer, like no matter what. And I was just
Speaker 1: like public service announcement. Law enforcement never wants to talk
Speaker 1: to you like on a friendly basis. Get a lawyer,
Speaker 1: no matter what. People feel like, if they get a lawyer,
Speaker 1: it means they've done something wrong. It doesn't. A lawyer
Speaker 1: protects her interests. But my husband said, I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: fine to talk to them for a minute. So he
Speaker 1: took them upstairs and you talked to them, and they
Speaker 1: asked him a few questions. And they asked him if
Speaker 1: you knew about this business entity and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I know of it, but I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about it. And he said, well, this is your chance
Speaker 1: to to to back up. This is your chance to
Speaker 1: save yourself. We know everything. And my husband was like what,
Speaker 1: And then he said, you know what, I need to
Speaker 1: talk to my lawyer. And they left. And then but
Speaker 1: before they left, they handed him a couple of letters
Speaker 1: telling him he was the target of a federal investigation
Speaker 1: in the Eastern District of Virginia related to his former
Speaker 1: employment at Amazon Web Services, and that started everything. What
Speaker 1: had Carl been doing at Amazon? Carl worked at Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services, which is Amazon's division that builds the Internet. Really,
Speaker 1: the Internet lives in these big warehouses called data centers,
Speaker 1: and they're full of the the servers that power the Internet.
Speaker 1: Amazon Web Services powers of the Internet. So like huge company, right,
Speaker 1: And my husband started at Amazon Web Services, and it
Speaker 1: was about five thousand employees, very small, and he spent
Speaker 1: seven years there. Their revenue grew like a hundred x
Speaker 1: or something in that time, something crazy um. And he
Speaker 1: worked in real estate, so he helped the company and
Speaker 1: the people who made the di visions. He helped them
Speaker 1: figure out like if they should buy a piece of
Speaker 1: land to build a data center, or if they should
Speaker 1: work with a developer to lease data center space. So
Speaker 1: he worked on that stuff. How did you and Carl meet?
Speaker 1: Carl and I met in I had moved to Minneapolis
Speaker 1: from New York, which is like a big move for me.
Speaker 1: I was thirty one and wanted to move back to
Speaker 1: the Midwest where I grew up. And I met this
Speaker 1: wonderful woman named Molly sam who you know. And she
Speaker 1: was also a lawyer and had lived in New York
Speaker 1: and we were chatting and like the first day we met,
Speaker 1: she was like, you know, you just you need to
Speaker 1: meet my older brother's best friend. And I was like why.
Speaker 1: She's like, you guys, will just I just I can't
Speaker 1: explain it, but you need to meet him. And she
Speaker 1: introduced us, and that's my husband, you know, Like we
Speaker 1: just we met for the first time in September. We
Speaker 1: went out for drinks and then we just we were
Speaker 1: always together after that. What did you love about him?
Speaker 1: He's brilliant, He's so kind and generous, kindest, most loyal
Speaker 1: person you'd ever meet. He is so smart, are so ambitious,
Speaker 1: and he's like we just share the same values, right.
Speaker 1: We both were people who wanted to live a big life,
Speaker 1: and like felt that we could both live our big lives,
Speaker 1: come together and build something great. But both do really
Speaker 1: big things on our own. And I'll say that I
Speaker 1: think like for a woman to find a partner like that,
Speaker 1: like it's not the dynamic you're told that you're going
Speaker 1: to have in America, right, And like that was just
Speaker 1: I mean, Carl has supported me and every big thing
Speaker 1: I've done and like pushed me to do it, not
Speaker 1: just supported me. But been like, of course you can
Speaker 1: do this. I remember when I started the riveter, he said,
Speaker 1: if you're going to take the bats swinging as hard
Speaker 1: as you can, right, and like that's just that's his personality.
Speaker 1: So the FBI comes to your door. And what happened
Speaker 1: after that? When did you realize this is not a
Speaker 1: one day thing. I realized it immediately. This is where
Speaker 1: fortunate you're a lawyer, and like I will say, every
Speaker 1: step of every day, like, I don't think we would
Speaker 1: have survived this far if I wasn't a lawyer, because
Speaker 1: we had access to other lawyers that I could call
Speaker 1: and get advice from. I am a trained litigator and
Speaker 1: trained to fight, and trained to find the facts, you know,
Speaker 1: all of these things. But he got a letter saying
Speaker 1: he was a target of a federal investigation. And when
Speaker 1: you're under federal investigation, you can be a target, a subject,
Speaker 1: or witness. It's all very form like, it's very formal.
Speaker 1: There's like this whole there's this whole prosecutorial industry in
Speaker 1: this country that I didn't even know about. I don't
Speaker 1: say that fliquantly, like it is big business. And I
Speaker 1: told this lawyer that I used to work with in
Speaker 1: New York. I was He's like, read the letter to me,
Speaker 1: and I read it, and they're like, Carl's a target.
Speaker 1: And generally when you get a target letter, you are
Speaker 1: indicted for a federal crime within sixty days. They think
Speaker 1: you committed a crime and it's going And so we
Speaker 1: hired a lawyer. And I will tell you the first
Speaker 1: law firm that we hired fired Carl after two weeks
Speaker 1: because they represented Amazon and other matters, which was like,
Speaker 1: that was terrifying and traumatic, and we wasted a lot
Speaker 1: of money. We hired great lawyers. And I will also
Speaker 1: say that Carl immediately wanted to talk to Amazon because
Speaker 1: he was like, what is going on here? Like he
Speaker 1: could not understand this. So he has tried to speak
Speaker 1: to Amazon directly multiple times over the past two years.
Speaker 1: Nothing to hide. Tell us, in layman's terms, what this
Speaker 1: case is about, and what it is that Carl has
Speaker 1: been accused of. Amazon accused my husband of a very
Speaker 1: specific crime called private sector honest services fraud. It is
Speaker 1: depriving your private employer of your quote honest services. So
Speaker 1: they allege that my husband steered data center leases to
Speaker 1: a certain developer in exchange for kickback payments, so that
Speaker 1: is their accusation. Um, they made it. I now know
Speaker 1: in tandem with a group called IPI, which is a
Speaker 1: billionaire investment fund led by Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, a lot
Speaker 1: of billionaires. I PI and Amazon accused my husband of
Speaker 1: this crime to the FBI. That's the allegation. And I
Speaker 1: will say it too because I think it's important and
Speaker 1: I always say this, you said this case. The government
Speaker 1: has never charged my husband. It's like there is no
Speaker 1: criminal case. There's just allegation. So over two years in
Speaker 1: there's just allegations. So every day do you wake up
Speaker 1: hoping he'll just be charged with something so life can
Speaker 1: move on. I hope it ends. I hope that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've always hoped that the the Amazon would speak to him directly.
Speaker 1: It is surprising to me that the company would choose
Speaker 1: to spend millions of dollars on lawyers rather than speak
Speaker 1: directly to an employee that worked for them for seven
Speaker 1: and a half years and has nothing to hide. That's
Speaker 1: frustrating to me endlessly. Seattle is a small community and
Speaker 1: we know a lot of the people at Amazon, so
Speaker 1: talk to us about the financial burden this has cast
Speaker 1: on your family. Amazon took your money. It feels like
Speaker 1: Amazon took our money. But I'll just go to the
Speaker 1: basics of this because I didn't understand this the day
Speaker 1: the FBI came to our house in April. The other
Speaker 1: letter they handed my husband said we intend to see
Speaker 1: these bank accounts from you, and I was like, what
Speaker 1: the hell is this? Like, they're just going to take
Speaker 1: our money. And there's a practice in America called civil
Speaker 1: forfeiture where law enforcement authorities can seize your money on
Speaker 1: the suspicion of a crime. They do not have to
Speaker 1: prove a crime. They do not have to charge you
Speaker 1: with a crime. They can take your money and say
Speaker 1: your money as a crime, and then you have to
Speaker 1: hire lawyers to fight to get it back. In May,
Speaker 1: so um, a month and a half after the FBI came,
Speaker 1: the federal government on a random Tuesday, took all of
Speaker 1: the money out of our bank accounts, every dollar. And
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I went from like, well, they
Speaker 1: also they took it from our lawyer's client trust account.
Speaker 1: And you know, I didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 1: but this is a prosecutorial tool to get you to
Speaker 1: plead guilty. Percent of people who are accused of a
Speaker 1: federal crime, plead guilty. We don't really have a jury
Speaker 1: system in America. We have a plead guilty system. And
Speaker 1: there are certain things prosecutors can do when you don't
Speaker 1: plead guilty you to get you to plead guilty. One
Speaker 1: of them is lead you penniless. So not only can
Speaker 1: you not feed your family, you cannot defend yourself in court.
Speaker 1: So they took all of our money. And I will
Speaker 1: say after the two months after they took all of
Speaker 1: our money, Amazon, knowing the government had taken all of
Speaker 1: our money based on their accusations, Amazon then sued my husband.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's very cruel for what. Oh, they
Speaker 1: have student my husband for like ten things so Rico,
Speaker 1: which is like a criminal gang. Right, the Rico statute
Speaker 1: was for the mafia so Rico, which with racketeering. And
Speaker 1: when you when you choose someone a rico, it's basically
Speaker 1: a civil way for like you or I Sam to
Speaker 1: say someone committed a crime. So same thing private sector
Speaker 1: on his services road. They also alleged that my husband,
Speaker 1: my husband violated federal antitrust laws. They said he rigged
Speaker 1: land prices. I mean, my husband's great, but I don't
Speaker 1: think that any single human could rig land prices. So Amy,
Speaker 1: what exactly happened when your money was taken? I mean,
Speaker 1: how does a family of six survive that? We're really lucky?
Speaker 1: I guess is the is the way, and I shouldn't
Speaker 1: feel that way. I feel lucky that we have survived,
Speaker 1: even though the money never should have been taken. I
Speaker 1: mean very specifically, after the government came on April twod
Speaker 1: we opened another bank account and started putting our earnings
Speaker 1: in that new bank accounts. So they didn't get that
Speaker 1: one bank account. They took literally everything else. Carl was
Speaker 1: able to work. He was a very successful consultant in
Speaker 1: real estate development at the time, and he was able
Speaker 1: to work until August when the accusations became very public.
Speaker 1: So we had some money coming in. I had my
Speaker 1: riveter salary for a while, and then we started selling things.
Speaker 1: We liquidated retirement, we sold our car, and then eventually
Speaker 1: I realized in October of that we needed to sell
Speaker 1: our house quickly. What was that decision like for you? I,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have kept moving. It's hard, it's hard,
Speaker 1: like to stop and think about it, but like that
Speaker 1: was the house I thought my girls would grow weapon.
Speaker 1: We worked so hard for the domb payment for that house.
Speaker 1: And at that point you'd also become kind of a
Speaker 1: very well known person in Seattle. You're one of the
Speaker 1: most high profile entrepreneurs there. You'd added so many jobs
Speaker 1: to the economy, and then almost overnight, you're selling a
Speaker 1: home and basically saying goodbye to a life that you'd
Speaker 1: created in this city. Yeah, and we just left, like
Speaker 1: we're really fortunate. I had a good friend who had
Speaker 1: helped us buy the house, and I called her and
Speaker 1: she knew what we were going through, and I said,
Speaker 1: we have to sell this and like I'm not capable
Speaker 1: of like doing anything, and um so we had just
Speaker 1: like did everything. You know. We got movers and paying
Speaker 1: for the movers was hard, right, Like they're all these things,
Speaker 1: Like we had to find a way to pay for
Speaker 1: the movers, which is a lot of money, and we
Speaker 1: put our stuff in storage. I had to find someone
Speaker 1: to take our dog. But we we just and we
Speaker 1: had some good friends. But we left Seattle in our
Speaker 1: minivan with like five backs and where do you go?
Speaker 1: It was raining? Um So, I mean that was kind
Speaker 1: of the big question. I was like, where do we
Speaker 1: go because it was the pandemic and we have four kids,
Speaker 1: poor babies, and my dad. You know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: go home to Ohio, but my dad had a kidney
Speaker 1: transplant in April, about two weeks after everything started for us,
Speaker 1: and so my dad, as a kidney transplant recipient, had
Speaker 1: to be so so careful with COVID, so we couldn't.
Speaker 1: We literally just couldn't go to Ohio. My sister lived
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and I just didn't see how we
Speaker 1: could stay there for a long time with her. My
Speaker 1: brother in law lived in a condo in Chicago, so
Speaker 1: that was out. And we were really luck because Carl's
Speaker 1: dad and step mom lived in Honolulu, so we could
Speaker 1: stay with them. So we drove to California and stayed
Speaker 1: with my sister for a month in her basement, and
Speaker 1: then we flew to Honolulu. At the height of the
Speaker 1: Second Wave. I put all my kids on a plane,
Speaker 1: which was really scary. There were ten people on the plane.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was when nobody was going anywhere. And
Speaker 1: we flew to Honolulu and we stayed there until August.
Speaker 1: So we were there from November of until August, and
Speaker 1: then you returned to Columbus, Ohio. We did. We returned
Speaker 1: to Columbus, Ohio. You know, I think we would have
Speaker 1: stayed in Honolulu, maybe a little bit longer. But I
Speaker 1: took on a role to help launch a company in
Speaker 1: New York and so, and we desperately needed that money,
Speaker 1: and so it was really I was commuting between Honolulu
Speaker 1: and New York for a few months, which was impossible
Speaker 1: to your job at sax Works. So we went to
Speaker 1: Ohio and I was able to fly to New York
Speaker 1: every Monday to Thursday while I was launching the company
Speaker 1: A quick break, so Amy and thinking about the girls.
Speaker 1: How disruptive has this been to their lives? How have
Speaker 1: you shielded them from all of this? So, you know, Sam,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. They are now seven, five, four and two.
Speaker 1: So this has been going on for the majority of
Speaker 1: my baby's life, right, and then my rest is about
Speaker 1: to have her third birthday, with this going on until
Speaker 1: turns six. I know that I haven't shielded it from
Speaker 1: them completely. It's impossible. People always tell me I'm handling
Speaker 1: this with such grace, but I'm not. It's ugly, it's messy,
Speaker 1: it's scary. But I read a lot of books when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I read a lot of
Speaker 1: books growing up in my twenties and thirties, and I
Speaker 1: love adventure stories, and so I tried to treat it
Speaker 1: like an adventure with the kids. They got to see
Speaker 1: all these different places and go on all these big adventures.
Speaker 1: And we've tried to really free meant like that, and
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly worked. How do you mom on
Speaker 1: the days when you just feel hopeless? The mothering has
Speaker 1: saved me because you know, you've got these four little girls,
Speaker 1: and like, I have these four little girls, and so
Speaker 1: I've always felt that, like if our life is over,
Speaker 1: me and girl, like they could still have a life.
Speaker 1: So I had to give them everything and like all
Speaker 1: the love I had. Also, when we got back to Ohio,
Speaker 1: I had my parents, and on the hardest days, my
Speaker 1: parents could help. How has this change your friendships and
Speaker 1: your relationships? Have you lost friends and gone closer to others?
Speaker 1: What does this kind of crisis due to those relationships
Speaker 1: you realize who your friends are. That's the easiest way
Speaker 1: to put it, Like, um, friendship is not something that
Speaker 1: we have when it's just convenient, like you have to
Speaker 1: be a friend, and hard times too and my friends
Speaker 1: have been remarkable like you, I mean like you basically
Speaker 1: some days just like forced to me to just do
Speaker 1: things right, which is a good friend. But I've lost
Speaker 1: some friends, and I definitely know there are people who
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people in the world who,
Speaker 1: when someone is accused of the crime, think they committed it.
Speaker 1: And I know that Amazon knows that. So let's go
Speaker 1: back to that for a minute. Was there ever a
Speaker 1: time when you doubted your husband's innocence, even in the
Speaker 1: very beginning? Absolutely not. No, my husband would never do
Speaker 1: anything he thought was illegal. So where is everything today?
Speaker 1: What's next? Well, it's interesting, Sam, because the Amazon civil
Speaker 1: case where Amazon sued my husband was in discovery. So
Speaker 1: that means, for the first time in years, my husband's
Speaker 1: lawyers and my husband are seeing all of the documents
Speaker 1: around Amazon's allegations, including the documents that they shared with
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice in their effort to get Carl
Speaker 1: charged with a crime. So that's in discovery, and soon
Speaker 1: Carl's lawyers will depose, which means kind of like interview
Speaker 1: under oath, all of the Amazon executives that are accusing
Speaker 1: my husband of a crime. And then I don't know
Speaker 1: what's happening with the government investigation, you don't really get
Speaker 1: insight into that. Carl's never been charged with a crime.
Speaker 1: But with the civil forfeiture yesterday, we learned that we
Speaker 1: were getting almost all of our money back. So twenty
Speaker 1: one months after the government took it, and after you know,
Speaker 1: we sold everything and we've tried to survive and navigate,
Speaker 1: paying for lawyers to defend ourselves against Amazon, we're getting
Speaker 1: the money back. And when is that going to hit
Speaker 1: your account? I know that the government filed emotion that
Speaker 1: they were giving it back to us, and then the
Speaker 1: judge has to, I think, sign off on the motion
Speaker 1: and then we call the U. S. Marshal Service who
Speaker 1: has our money, and get it back. Amy. I can't
Speaker 1: help but think this is uncanny timing because just earlier
Speaker 1: this week you launched a go fund Me campaign to
Speaker 1: pay for your family's legal bills, which, if mounted, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how much a month you're spending in
Speaker 1: legal bills right now, between forty and fifty dollars. It's shocking.
Speaker 1: So it's not surprising that of people plead guilty when
Speaker 1: there's a forfeiture, because I mean, who could afford that nobody.
Speaker 1: And I will say, there, there weren't many months we've
Speaker 1: been spending that much. But now to defend ourselves. I'm
Speaker 1: not in the Amazon all sup. But for Carl to
Speaker 1: defend himself against Amazon, it's that much. And I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, Amazon's lawyers are around a thousand dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: They use a very big fancy law firm called Gibson Done,
Speaker 1: who Facebook hires and Apple hires all the big tech
Speaker 1: companies higher and their lawyers are a thousand dollars an
Speaker 1: hour and they have like five lawyers on every call.
Speaker 1: So Amazon is spending untold millions of dollars on this.
Speaker 1: So earlier this week he launched a go fund me
Speaker 1: campaign and how many people have contributed to that Almost
Speaker 1: three hundred, which is like, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: Amazon has been so loud and calling my husband a
Speaker 1: criminal for so many years that I feel like people
Speaker 1: just assume he is, or people assume he's been charged
Speaker 1: with a crime when he hasn't. And so for all
Speaker 1: of these people some I know, some I don't, to
Speaker 1: support him is like, it's amazing. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the timing of getting your money back like there had
Speaker 1: to be an association with you know, the government or
Speaker 1: Amazon seeing the go fund me campaign, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. So really what happened And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we launched to go fund me is the civil forfeiture.
Speaker 1: They took the money and we've never been able to
Speaker 1: fight to get it back, and it was finally time
Speaker 1: for us to litigate with the government on our money
Speaker 1: and have discovery. So we have been able to depose
Speaker 1: the FBI agents who came to our house and investigated
Speaker 1: my husband. And when we finally have that opportunity, the
Speaker 1: government settled with us rather than go through that process.
Speaker 1: And I had wanted to go fund of me because
Speaker 1: this was now like another lawsuit we had to fight.
Speaker 1: Right when your money is taken, you have to pay
Speaker 1: lawyers to fight to get it back, and so it's
Speaker 1: finally our opportunity to fight to get it back, and
Speaker 1: they settled. So what will happen now to the go
Speaker 1: fund me money. It will go directly to our law firm.
Speaker 1: I mean we you know, we have spent an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of lawyers and we will continue to and even
Speaker 1: though our money is returned, that could easily be enough
Speaker 1: entirely by lawyers fees as well, so you get the
Speaker 1: money back. But that's only a very small part of
Speaker 1: the pain that you've experienced. It's affected your friendships, your marriage,
Speaker 1: I'm sure your family. What's the impact been on your career.
Speaker 1: So I'll start by saying that the investors and the
Speaker 1: Riveter have been amazingly supportive, and I am forever grateful.
Speaker 1: I'm lucky because a lot of people could have chosen
Speaker 1: not to be the Riveter. If you don't know, I
Speaker 1: had raised thirty million dollars from my company and we
Speaker 1: weren't in real life company, so we weathered a traumatic
Speaker 1: pandemic as well. But we have survived somehow. But you know,
Speaker 1: during the pendency of all this, I had to seek
Speaker 1: other employments. I had to make more money, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had some people who were willing to take me
Speaker 1: on to launch things, and I had other people who,
Speaker 1: when they found out about what was going on with
Speaker 1: my husband, attached to me to it and refused to
Speaker 1: hire me because of it. You know. Also, like if
Speaker 1: you google me, everything I've ever done in my life
Speaker 1: is not first. Now this is first. This is part
Speaker 1: of our story. It's the story people learn first now.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think for about a year, right, Sam,
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything about it, and then there was
Speaker 1: a lot of press and then I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I have to own this. I think there's
Speaker 1: power of the accusers. If the accused are silent. I
Speaker 1: think if you speak out, you have a better chance.
Speaker 1: I imagine a lot of people in her situation would
Speaker 1: have said, Okay, we need at least one breadwinner we
Speaker 1: can count on for a while. Um, so we don't
Speaker 1: want to do anything to jeopardize you know, Amy's career.
Speaker 1: Was there a lot of thought put into you know,
Speaker 1: the risks of speaking out, or did one day you
Speaker 1: just decide I have to speak out. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of thought put into me not speaking out because
Speaker 1: of the things you just said, I needed to be
Speaker 1: the breadwinner, etcetera. But the government took one of my
Speaker 1: bank accounts too, because we had paid lawyers through my
Speaker 1: bank account, and so they said that I laundered money
Speaker 1: for Carl. So it all sounds so anyway, um, and
Speaker 1: so I was named in the forfeiture actions and so
Speaker 1: I became a part of it, and so that choice
Speaker 1: was taken from me. Whether that was an intentional choice
Speaker 1: by the government to bring me into it to hurt
Speaker 1: my family further, or whether it was just happenstance. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but you know, eventually, like I reached a
Speaker 1: point where I thought, you know, I'm I'm good enough
Speaker 1: at what I do that I can consult, I can
Speaker 1: make money for my family. But the most important thing
Speaker 1: for me is that my husband is home with us,
Speaker 1: his freedom. My little girls need their dad. So what
Speaker 1: does that look like today, his future freedom or his
Speaker 1: chances that clearing this up and just moving on. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, we've gotten in civil discovery.
Speaker 1: Our lawyers have seen the communications between Amazon and the government,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you that Amazon has met with
Speaker 1: the government at least eighty nine times to lobby the
Speaker 1: government to charge my husband with a crime. That feels terrifying.
Speaker 1: It also feels like if they've been trying to do
Speaker 1: this for two years and my husband hasn't been charged
Speaker 1: with the crime, Like what is what does their allegation
Speaker 1: look like? I know that we will fight until we
Speaker 1: can't fight anymore. That if Carl is charged with the crime,
Speaker 1: we will take it to trial and we will just
Speaker 1: keep trying. Are there any risks to speaking out? Do
Speaker 1: you ever worry about poking a bear? Amazon being the bear?
Speaker 1: So it's funny. Carl and I were talking about this
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to make them quote the quote them mad, whether
Speaker 1: that's Amazon, Department of Justice, anybody, I don't know. And
Speaker 1: Carl said, they're already mad. They're already mad. Like and
Speaker 1: Amazon built a narrative and controlled a narrative. I'm a storyteller.
Speaker 1: Amazon built a narrative. They built a narrative to the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, they built a narrative and filing a
Speaker 1: public complaint in a court of law that anybody can
Speaker 1: read in Most reporters will read the allegations and repeat
Speaker 1: them in their stories. And so I think the only
Speaker 1: way to tell Carl's story is to tell Carl's story
Speaker 1: and to tell our family story. And I also I
Speaker 1: believe in justice and I believe in fairness. It's been
Speaker 1: a north star in my life. I've been involved in
Speaker 1: politics since I was a kid. I was interning at
Speaker 1: the Ohio Statehouse and I was in high school. I
Speaker 1: worked for Jimmy Carter. I was on Obama's National Finance Committee, Like,
Speaker 1: justice is important to me, and this has really challenged
Speaker 1: my core beliefs. Really, the civil forfeiture piece of it
Speaker 1: did right, because it's like, don't take away our ability
Speaker 1: to fight, Like you can't deem money guilty if someone
Speaker 1: hasn't even been charged, let alone tried for a crime.
Speaker 1: And so speaking out too has allowed me to start
Speaker 1: thinking of how I can lobby for change for others
Speaker 1: and now a quick break. You know, I've had a
Speaker 1: front row seat to what you've been going through and
Speaker 1: all of the accusations and all these things, but it's
Speaker 1: still hard for me to make hads or tails of
Speaker 1: all of it. What would have happened if Amy Nelson
Speaker 1: was not an attorney? Where would this case be today?
Speaker 1: I don't know. And I'm not saying I'm not like
Speaker 1: some like magic maker, but I can say that trying
Speaker 1: to help somebody who was accused understand the accusations, just that,
Speaker 1: just that part helping my husband understand the accusations, because
Speaker 1: he was like, what the hell is happening? Right? Like
Speaker 1: you have to generally pay a lawyer lots and lots
Speaker 1: of money to understand the accusations, right, and then you know,
Speaker 1: also like gathering facts and all of these different things
Speaker 1: that's money. And so the fact that he had someone
Speaker 1: who could help him do those things I think was helpful.
Speaker 1: And also I was able to understand and assess the
Speaker 1: risks and say I stand with you and I support
Speaker 1: you in fighting because I will tell you, Sam, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who gave the advice to
Speaker 1: my husband, just plead guilty, even if you don't didn't
Speaker 1: commit a crime, to get it over with because you're
Speaker 1: never going to beat him, you can't afford it. Just
Speaker 1: plead guilty. And that to me was like shocking. But
Speaker 1: that is a lot of the advice given because the
Speaker 1: pro sus is insane. Well, and just watching you go
Speaker 1: through this, I mean, it doesn't seem like such bad advice.
Speaker 1: I mean, if there was a way to speed this
Speaker 1: up and make it go away and be over it
Speaker 1: does feel like for the last two years you've been
Speaker 1: living in a sort of prison. Yeah, and then that's
Speaker 1: by design, right, it's by design. But but listen, like,
Speaker 1: if Carl plied guilty, hey, he didn't commit a crime,
Speaker 1: and he if it's like there's a bunch of people accused,
Speaker 1: So if he pleads guilty, then all the other people
Speaker 1: I have to deal with the repercussions of his guilty plea.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense. I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: because I remember at one time hearing about the other
Speaker 1: people who are accused. And you happen to have a
Speaker 1: very robust income going into this. But what if you
Speaker 1: Amy had been a stay at home parent who had
Speaker 1: given up your career. Where would the Nelson family be today?
Speaker 1: We'd be in trouble, right, And that's the you know,
Speaker 1: it's my parents are amazing, and my mother always worked.
Speaker 1: And when I was sixteen years old, my father lost
Speaker 1: his job and I remember thinking, when I was sixteen,
Speaker 1: if my mother didn't work, we would be in so
Speaker 1: much trouble. And then that day I knew that I
Speaker 1: would always work. And that's my life story and that
Speaker 1: you know, that impacted me in that way, and I'm
Speaker 1: grateful and lucky for it. But there are other people
Speaker 1: involved in this that don't have that. It's got to
Speaker 1: be really, really hard. How is this experience? I mean,
Speaker 1: you're obviously still in the thick of it, but how
Speaker 1: do you think it's changed you? I think, listen, like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things like, I know how
Speaker 1: fragile life is, and I didn't before in this way,
Speaker 1: but like, whatever you thought your life was could literally
Speaker 1: go away in an instant, And I know that. I'm
Speaker 1: so fortunate that I didn't learn that lesson until I
Speaker 1: was forty. But I think, like there are some really
Speaker 1: crappy things like sam as you know, in June of
Speaker 1: the government executed a search warrant in our house with
Speaker 1: four armed FBI agents that brought guns into my house
Speaker 1: and my little girls were there. I don't feel safe.
Speaker 1: So you have a little bit of PTSD from that experience,
Speaker 1: I would say a lot. Actually, I've been diagnosed with trauma.
Speaker 1: It's actually called continuous trauma syndrome because the threat is
Speaker 1: not gone. Because one other tactic that prosecutors can use
Speaker 1: when someone doesn't plead guilty of a crime is to
Speaker 1: the threat of arresting them in their home. They do
Speaker 1: it a lot. So they come and arrest you in
Speaker 1: your home, usually before dawn, and drag you out with
Speaker 1: guns in front of your kids. They threatened to do
Speaker 1: that for many months, and so I started waking the
Speaker 1: girls up at five am and taking them out of
Speaker 1: the house to a park for months when we were
Speaker 1: still in Seattle. It's unthinkable, you know, I have to say, like, listen,
Speaker 1: these allegations are serious. Carl takes them seriously. I take
Speaker 1: them seriously like he's, you know, more than willing to
Speaker 1: defend himself if given the opportunity to do so. But
Speaker 1: you realize a lot of this, like the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system is it seems in some ways like a chess game,
Speaker 1: right Like, do we need to be spending resources on
Speaker 1: like tactical military engagements to arrest people because they won't
Speaker 1: be guilty? Or can they just walk in, you know,
Speaker 1: and accept and accept the charges like right like? And
Speaker 1: the trauma it brings on children and loved ones? Is
Speaker 1: that necessary? Is that who we are? Is that what
Speaker 1: we want as a country? Is that is that important
Speaker 1: to us? When was the last time you felt just
Speaker 1: truly happy? There have been moments, right like, you learn
Speaker 1: to live, you get used to things, right like, this
Speaker 1: thing is my baseline. Now. We found out yesterday all
Speaker 1: of our funds were being returned, and like Sam, I
Speaker 1: didn't feel peace. I didn't feel I didn't feel anything like,
Speaker 1: which I'm like, what is wrong with me? I just thought, okay,
Speaker 1: one battle, one battle, one battle. There's more to fight,
Speaker 1: so Amy, thank you for being on our show, your show,
Speaker 1: and for sharing your story. As I mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: the show, part two will come, but it won't come
Speaker 1: for a while until we know how this all unfolds.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, obviously I am rooting for you,
Speaker 1: and I know that our listeners are too. Thank you, Sam,
Speaker 1: I love you. Thanks for being my friend, Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. We
Speaker 1: would appreciate it if you leave her review wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and of course, connect with us on
Speaker 1: social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story
Speaker 1: with Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The
Speaker 1: Riveter at The Riveter dot c O and Sam's company,
Speaker 1: park Place Payments at park place Payments dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: to our producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective Blue
Speaker 1: Burns