Jessica Vera said she depended on a Walmart mobile delivery app to earn a living by driving merchandise purchased online by the retailer's customers and dropping it off at their homes.
But when she began mysteriously seeing a marked decrease in requests for orders from her "Spark" app — and waiting longer and longer between deliveries — she could no longer rely on Walmart for her primary source of income.
"You're spending more hours wasting more time doing nothing, sitting outside in the sun, driving around, trying to find the money," said the Broward County resident. "It's crazy having to work other platforms to just make ends meet because it's just that bad."
What Vera experienced is not an isolated incident, according to Justice for App Workers. They claim she and hundreds of other delivery drivers in Florida are victims of a "predatory scam ring" that has hacked into Walmart's app to steer deliveries to a group of "rogue" drivers.
"Scam leaders have refused to re-distribute these Walmart digital orders to their fellow delivery drivers unless they pay them with cash or sometimes even through cell phones or marijuana," said Nicki Morris, a spokeswoman for Justice for App Workers, in a statement.
The group represents a coalition of more than 130,000 rideshare drivers and delivery workers nationwide. They protested Tuesday in front of a Walmart store in Fort Lauderdale.
READ MORE: 'One job should be enough': MIA catering workers march for higher wages
"These corrupt scam drivers unfairly hoard delivery orders and cut off access for other legitimate delivery workers to store orders, making it impossible for them to do their job," Morris said.
Morris said Walmart delivery drivers working in Hollywood, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Jackson, and Orlando have complained to Walmart and law enforcement agencies to no avail.
Said Vera: "We've been calling for help and, and asking Walmart to please make the changes to secure the platform. And they've done nothing. They've have nothing. They've ignored us."
In response to WLRN, a Walmart spokesperson blamed "bots" for taking orders for some drivers. They said the retailer has sought to lessen their influence and put in place a rigorous process to investigate complaints.
"We have a robust bot prevention system to detect and prevent services that manipulate the app in any way, which has enabled us to significantly reduce the use of bots on the Spark Driver platform," said the company in a written statement to WLRN. "We encourage drivers on the Spark Driver platform to report any suspicious activity to Spark Driver platform driver support."
"Creating a safe and secure driver experience is our top priority. We have zero tolerance for harassment or threats of violence and investigate and take the appropriate action, including deactivating drivers, when we receive reports of this type of behavior," read the company statement.
Bots, or software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, are not a unique tool to the Walmart app. Apps like Instacart and Amazon Flex have recently dealt with similar issues.
For most apps, including Spark, bots violate the terms of use.
Another way some drivers are skirting the app's policies is a scheme in which a person will apply to be a driver for the app and, once approved, lease their account credentials to others. The accounts can be leased for hundreds of dollars.
Walmart said the company is working on new identify verification procedures for the app, and has even rolled it out in some areas.
