Jury convicts owner of Amazon delivery business for fraud schemes and forging federal judge’s signature

ATLANTA - A federal jury has convicted Brittany Hudson of all 30 counts in an indictment that charged her with stealing nearly $10 million from Amazon based on fraud, laundering the fraudulent proceeds from that scheme, lying to a franchising company while on pretrial release, and forging the signature of former Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr. on fake court documents.

"Hudson and her literal partner in crime brazenly stole nearly $10 million from Amazon through a fraud scheme involving fake vendors and invoices," said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. "A federal jury put an end to Hudson's insatiable greed by returning a guilty verdict on 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and forgery."

"The level of greed on the part of the perpetrators in this case was staggering," said Special Agent in Charge Robert Donovan of the U.S. Secret Service Atlanta Field Office. "Leveraging personal relationships, she stole millions from Amazon and was so confident she wouldn't be caught, she even forged the signature of a federal judge with the intent of defrauding a second company. Thanks to the diligent work of our agents and the prosecution team at the U.S. Attorney's Office, her days of defrauding others have come to an end."

According to U.S. Attorney Hertzberg, the charges, and other information presented in court: Brittany Hudson owned a business, Legend Express LLC, which contracted with Amazon to deliver packages. Hudson was in a romantic relationship with Kayricka Wortham a/k/a Kayricka Dupree a/k/a Kayricka Young, who worked as an operations manager at an Amazon warehouse in Smyrna, Georgia. In her position, Wortham supervised others and had the authority to approve new Amazon vendors and the payment of vendor invoices.

From about January 2022 to June 2022, Hudson and Wortham defrauded Amazon out of nearly $10 million based on a scheme involving bogus vendors and invoices. Wortham provided fake vendor information to unknowing subordinates and asked them to input the information into Amazon's vendor system. Once the information was entered, Wortham and another co-conspirator at Amazon approved the fake vendors, enabling the vendors to submit invoices.

Hudson and Wortham then submitted fictitious invoices, falsely representing that the phony vendors had provided goods and services to Amazon. Wortham approved the invoices, causing Amazon to transfer approximately $9.4 million to bank accounts controlled by Hudson, Wortham, and co-conspirators. Hudson and Wortham purchased expensive real estate and luxury cars with Amazon's money, including a nearly $1 million home in Smyrna, Georgia, a 2019 Lamborghini Urus, a 2021 Dodge Durango, a 2022 Tesla Model X, a 2018 Porsche Panamera, and a Kawasaki ZX636 motorcycle.

In September 2022, Hudson and Wortham were charged in federal court with defrauding Amazon. In January 2023, while on bond, they lied to a potential business partner, claiming that their Amazon-related criminal charges had been dismissed. To support that lie, the two emailed fake court documents that purported to dismiss the charges and contained the forged signatures of Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr., who has since retired, and Cobb County Magistrate Judge Norman L. Barnett, who was then one of the prosecutors on the case. Hudson also emailed doctored bank statements and personal financial statements that fraudulently inflated the balances in her and Wortham's accounts.

On March 13, 2026, a jury convicted Hudson of 30 counts, including two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 17 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, nine counts of money laundering, and one count of forgery of the signature of a federal judge. The jury also found that money seized from Hudson's bank account and Hudson's residence in Smyrna, Georgia, were forfeitable as fraudulent proceeds of the Amazon scheme.

On June 27, 2023, Kayricka Wortham, 34, of Atlanta, Georgia, was sentenced to 16 years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $9,469,731.45 in restitution to Amazon. More than $3 million in fraudulent proceeds seized from multiple bank accounts, the Smyrna home, and the vehicles purchased with fraudulent proceeds were forfeited. Wortham was convicted of the Amazon fraud charge on November 30, 2022, after she pleaded guilty. On October 6, 2025, she pleaded guilty to forgery of the signature of a federal judge. She is scheduled to be sentenced on the forgery charge on March 25, 2026, at 10 a.m., before U.S. District Judge Michael L. Brown.

Sentencing for Brittany Hudson, 40, of Atlanta, Georgia, is scheduled for June 16, 2026, at 10:00 a.m., before Judge Brown.

This case is being investigated by the United States Secret Service.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen H. McClain and Angela Adams are prosecuting the case.

For further information please contact the U.S. Attorney's Public Affairs Office at [email protected] or (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia is http://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga.