Infamous Sneaker-Reseller Zadeh Kicks Was Allegedly Fleecing Customers For Years: Report

Source: Nike / NIke

A few weeks ago it was reported that known sneaker-reseller Zadeh Kicks found himself under fire for pulling thee biggest jux in sneaker history and suddenly closing up shop, dissolving his LLC, and making off with millions of dollars in pre-orders that he had no intention of fulfilling.

Now in a new article from NiceKicks.com, we get an amazingly in-depth look at how Zadeh rose to the top of the reselling game even though he’s seemingly always been a struggling business man. Starting his Zadeh Kicks website back in 2013 in which he’d take pre-orders for limited edition sneakers for a hefty marked up price, Zadeh was seemingly making good on his promises as he had plugs all over the place and would be able to get his customers their kicks even if they were months after the initial release date.

Unfortunately, once Nike began cutting the mom and pops stores out of their operation and focused solely on big chains like Foot Locker and tier zero shops like Sneakers N Stuff, Zadeh found himself struggling to keep up with his pre-orders and began getting his kicks from StockX.

It was not a secret that Zadeh Kicks had an active relationship with StockX as a customer. A former employee of StockX reached out to Nice Kicks to confirm rumors that Zadeh Kicks was the marketplace’s biggest buyer, registered under the same username (Bethne83) used on Instagram by Bethany Mockerman, Malekzadeh’s girlfriend. Mockerman also described herself on LinkedIn, at various times, as Financial Coordinator, Finance Manager, and CFO at Zadeh Kicks.

There was nothing particularly wrong with Zadeh Kicks using StockX to purchase shoes, but the large volume of purchases on the secondary market indicated how many pre-orders Zadeh Kicks was filling this way, rather than by purchasing from retailers or other suppliers.

But if Zadeh couldn’t get the kicks he needed to honor his pre-order he’d offer customers a buyout but once things became particularly hard he started giving out gift cards because “gift cards allowed for money to stay within the Zadeh Kicks bank account. For customers, using gift cards to place additional orders was easier than transferring cash.”

“Though the cards came quickly, it was a pain getting a long list of these cards,” explained a Zadeh Kicks customer since 2019. “The cards would be added to your account, but since they were capped at $9,999, not only would Zadeh have to manually create a bunch of the cards, we would have to apply them individually with each order.” Shopify’s Service Terms cap the value of gift cards at $9,999.

Clever to say the least. Still, things only got weirder and more complicated from there as Zadeh would prohibit customers from using gift cards on items in stock and only for pre-orders that probably wouldn’t get fulfilled.

Needless to say, his customers found out the hard-way that Zadeh Kicks was a conman who was getting ready to blow town on a moment’s notice. Now that he’s under investigation from the FBI, we can only imagine how things will pan out for him in the coming future.

Check out the rest of the article here and let us know your thoughts on the situation and sneaker-reselling in general these days.