About the Wayfair and Amazon Human Trafficking Conspiracy...

One of my best friends wanted me to name this post; "Generating True Crime: Fact or Fiction?" Which is a very nuanced way of explaining what's going on, but in the long run would not have gotten me much views on this post. Which for me, writing it, has been an emotional roller coaster.

The best place to start this is at the beginning.

I woke up this morning and looked on my Twitter feed to see this tweet:

And my first thoughts were...WTF??

So I kept researching and what I found was peculiar to say the least.

The conspiracy generated from a Redditor on the r/Conspiracy page which I know doesn't seem like a viable source but lets hear it out:

24 hours after this was published, theories ran like wildfire on Twitter and Reddit, with Wayfair coming under fire.

On home furnishing e-commerce platform Wayfair, they were selling unappealing, clinical looking and poorly photographed cabinets at insane prices: $13,000 each.

Even stranger, each of the cabinets were named Neriah,” “Yaritza,” “Samiyah,” and “Alyvia,” and they come from a Wayfair - trade-marked Utility Store.

Social media users linked the "Anabel 5-shelf storage unit," linked to Anabel Wilson, a 14-year old Kansas girl was has been missing since February. Others tried to link as "Alyvia" shelf to Alyvia Navarro, a missing child who went missing in 2013 at 3 years old. Sadly, she was found dead a few days after she went missing. In addition, over 800,000 children are reported missing each year, so is it possible that these products sharing names with missing children could just be a coincidence?

However, as soon as Wayfair was under fire, the cabinets disappeared from Wayfair shortly after they were reported to the human trafficking hotline. Was it because of the accusations despite potentially being baseless?

And it does not end there, there have been protests where Wayfair employees walked out of the Boston-based furniture company's Copley Square headquarters over executives refusal to back out to a sale to a government contractor furnishing a federal detention centre for migrants near the U.S Mexico border.

Twitter users have ran with this theory and have come up with their own evidence and conclusions:

Wayfair has a vast catalogue of overly priced items as well as the cupboards and the pillows mentioned above.

Various Reddit users have proposed another equally plausible theories:

"Wayfair is a drop shipping company, so the least nefarious explanation is likely that particular sellers on Wayfair are overpricing items, simply bc they can. The other explanation, in my mind, is that these overpriced items are being used to launder money (which makes a bit more sense to me, because who in their right mind would fall for a drop shipping scam of buying a $45k zodiac pillow that looks like it’s worth $2?).”

This seems the most reasonable reason, rather than jumping straight to Human Trafficking, but then again why are there children's names in the titles descriptions and why were they removed?

“There is, of course, no truth to these claims," Susan Frechette, a Wayfair spokeswoman told FOX Business in an email Friday. "The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced.”

The online retailer has since deleted the products that "did not adequately explain the high price point.”

Further evidence has mounted as one of the missing children who the cupboards are named after "Samiyah" has used her Instagram live to confirm that she is NOT missing. Check out the live below:

So is Wayfair completely clean of these discrepancies? We will have to find out.

However, since then, Amazon has been under fire, as it was inevitable that people began noticing a pattern of exorbitantly priced items.

The largest e-commerce player in the world is also accused of sex trafficking with the not-so justified price tags on normal household products, such as pillows.

With this particular pillow as well as the price-tag, twitter users noticed some very cryptic reviews, for example one reviewer wrote, "I like sticking to be bold and have some attitude,”

Reviews on one hand could be damming evidence in the case of Todd Kohlhepp who used to leave horrendous reviews on amazon purchases, for example he ordered a Folding Shovel, and wrote ""Keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies."

Again, we could be reaching as this isn't the craziest amazon review we have ever seen, so its not exactly damming evidence.

The pillows are not the only thing that has strange reviews, check out the reviews for this chair below, again it could be sarcastic and a joke but we don't officially know.

One plausible reason could be placeholder listing which is when a product is low in stock or out of stock, but they don't want to categorize it as such so the company puts the price up to crazy high to discourage anyone from buying it.

However, that is not the only thing, one twitter user noticed that when you typed in the name of a girl missing JaiQi from Singapore, a product titled "JaiQui Large Office Boss Desk" popped on the list. Check it out below:

However, the claims made by the social media users have yet to be backed by substantial evidence outside of screenshots. And again, one of the missing children has confirmed she isn't missing, is this all one odd coincidence? Is there something more? Meanwhile, Amazon is yet to comment on the outrage.

What we must remember is that Child/Sex Trafficking is a real ordeal, and whilst it is going on in the dark web or even possibly, (not ruling it out,) e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Wayfair, we must remember that there are real people and children suffering from this.

We have to take a step forward and as well as coming up with theories, we must help these people, so if we see anything strange, we must report it and we must learn what we could do to help.

If you want to find out more about spotting the potential signs of human trafficking, check out the Modern Slavery Helpline's website.