https://gizmodo.com/about-the-wayfair-child-trafficking-conspiracy-1844342713
The cabinets, named “Neriah,” “Yaritza,” “Samiyah,” and “Alyvia,” cost an average of roughly $13,000 each and come from the Wayfair-trademarked WFX Utility store, where a professionally-photographed nine-piece full kitchen cabinet set is going for $1,430. According to Redditor Forsaken-Clock, who claims to have been onto the conspiracy earlier, the cabinets disappeared from Wayfair.com shortly after they reported them to the human trafficking hotline. (They still appear in Google cache.)
“I can not believe my eyes that they’ve deleted those cabinets off the site,” one redditor wrote. “It’s from a private seller on Wayfair,” another replied. The Wayfair cabinets only show up under the Wayfair-trademarked store WFX Utility. We don’t know who’s selling them, basically. And Wayfair did not respond to a request for comment.
Another redditor pointed out that Wayfair had furnished a migrant detention camp and that there have been “ongoing issues with tracking where all these kids are ending up.”
Best to stop at the cabinets, because the Reddit thread then leads to a certifiable closet of horrors: a user noticed that if you type in the SKU code after “src us,” images suggesting child abuse appear. I will not confirm this and suggest you tread lightly because you could inadvertently violate the law. But one Redditor pointed out that “src us” alone pulls up the images because of a horrific Russian image hosting website which ends in src.ru. Another user pointed out that simply typing “young” into Yandex only pulls up images of young girls “in revealing clothing.”
...
Twitter users ran with the conspiracy. Various accounts, including “Q the Wake Up” found that names of missing children match up with cabinets as well as a $9,999 zodiac pillow (now removed from the site). Another person claimed to have screengrabbed the pillow on sale with a significantly reduced price seconds after refreshing the page. A $10,000 cactus (which was online this afternoon and now appears to be removed) is pictured next to books about the Kennedys and the Clintons!!
But practically every throw pillow and accent chair has a human name attached, and outrageously overpriced items do not a child trafficking scandal make. Redditor forestein proposed two 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?).”
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Earlier today, a Wayfair representative told Fox Business News that “There is, of course, no truth to these claims. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced.”
Except, of course, they're not. I've outfitted a fair few industrial and manufacturing sites and for five figures, you get a lot more than a fuckin' cabinet -- you get room-sized stainless steel shelving systems with counters, overhead storage and integrated plumbing and electrical systems.
Here's the full statement:
"There is, of course, no truth to these claims. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced. Recognizing that the photos and descriptions provided by the supplier did not adequately explain the high price point, we have temporarily removed the products from site to rename them and to provide a more in-depth description and photos that accurately depict the product to clarify the price point."
Now, the consistency of the naming aspects make this whole flap irreducibly creepy, but I do agree with the Redditor above that this was more likely just a money laundering / illegal payments system hidden in plain sight. Especially since this is not just a matter of "accurately priced" "industrial grade cabinets," it's also a matter of $10,000 pillows -- one pillow, mind -- and baby albums going for eleven grand.
Just like good old Pizzagate, the debunkers tend to focus on the most ridiculous framing possible. "Kids Shipped in Armoires?" scoffs the dead husk of Newsweek, but of course, nobody is saying that. What we're looking at here is a payment system. Nobody is shipping cabinets or pillows or cactii here at all.
This was odd, this was inconclusive, but this was not nothing.
