Amazon Settles Kickback Lawsuit With Two Ex-AWS Managers

Amazon has settled its lawsuit against two former Amazon Web Services real estate managers, Carl Nelson and Casey Kirschner, whom it accused of taking kickbacks on data centre deals. The company informed the court on 20 October, less than two weeks before the case was due to go to trial.

In a joint statement, the two men admitted breaking Amazon's code of conduct. They said they regret their actions and apologize for failing to meet Amazon's high ethical standards. The statement, however, does not describe the payments as kickbacks or say they were illegal. All other terms, including whether any money changed hands, are confidential. Rodney Atherton, a Colorado lawyer who set up companies for the two men, has also settled.

A case years in the making

Amazon filed the suit in 2020, alleging that the managers took kickbacks on Northern Virginia property deals in exchange for steering work to developers. Nelson was investigated by the FBI but never charged. In 2023, a federal judge threw out most of the claims, but in September 2025 a federal appeals court revived several of them, including racketeering and fraud, and sent the case back for trial.

What comes next

The dispute is not over. Amazon is still pursuing Brian Watson and his Denver firm, Northstar Commercial Partners. The company says Northstar won nine data centre projects between 2018 and 2020 by paying kickbacks, an allegation Watson denies.

Their trial is scheduled to begin on 2 November in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Watson and Northstar have asked the judge to order Amazon to hand over the settlement agreement, a request that could shed light on the confidential terms.

The case is a rare public look at how procurement and real estate decisions behind the cloud industry's data centre build-out can be challenged in court, and the remaining trial will test Amazon's claims against the developer side of the alleged scheme.