[michaelmrose]

The law is explicitly not what you imagine might make sense. The US government spent millions of dollars pursuing this and went with "honest services fraud" based on Amazons code of conduct which it then admitted this was incorrect.

[deschutes]

Be that as it may, from cursory research, there is a body of US law on these kinds of practices under the term "commercial bribery". I can't speak to the legal details at all but this doesn't seem to be a case of an honest person getting mixed up in the legal system. Rather the opposite in my view.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_bribery