• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Wayfair Sex Trafficking Conspiracy

Vardoger

Make mine a 99
Joined
Jun 3, 2004
Messages
6,647
Location
Valaskjalf (Ex. pat.)
Some strange coincidences between missing children in USA and Wayfair's naming convention for furniture and decorations has been noticed.

Reddit: Wayfair and sex trafficking, is there any truth to this?




Wayfair is of course dismissing the conspiracy theory.

Wayfair shoots down conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking and expensive cabinets
Hayley Peterson
Jul 10, 2020, 10:14 PM

Wayfair

AP Photo/Jenny Kane
  • Wayfair on Friday rejected a conspiracy theory involving sex-trafficking allegations and expensive cabinets listed on its website.
  • Social-media users shared screenshots of the cabinets, which cost upward of $14,000, and speculated that the items were in fact missing children who could be purchased through Wayfair's website.
  • "There is, of course, no truth to these claims," a Wayfair spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced."
Wayfair shoots down conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking and expensive cabinets
 
Last edited:
For what it's worth ... Snopes has already posted an initial "False" attribution for these claims:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wayfair-trafficking-children/

Wayfair has already issued a statement (see above) regarding the high-priced cabinets carrying personal names as product labels.

It's interesting that one follow-on spin on the conspiracy theory relates to alleged Wayfair SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) numbers linking (via search) to photos of female children if one uses the Russian Yandex service for the search. One cannot help but wonder whether Yandex is being exploited to foster this latest "what if" mania.

It's also worth noting that Wayfair's exorbitant pricing on certain relatively small items (pillows and shower curtains) remains a mystery.
 
Wow. That is weird. 10 thousand dollars for a cushion? As the twitter thread point out, even if it wasnt a cover for child traffiking it could still be money laundering.
There are sometimes reasons for stupid prices- to keep the listing in holding rather than remove it while out of stock for example, but the naming thing is weird.
 
The naming convention seems to be correlated with products sold under the brand name "WFX Utility." WFX Utility is a trademark of Wayfair itself:

https://trademarks.justia.com/880/35/wfx-88035475.html

My first guess is that someone at Wayfair thought it would be a good idea to give each product line or style its own name. This is what IKEA famously did with (primarily Swedish) place names. It appears to me Wayfair is applying the same tactic with personal names.
 
Crazy prices there for some old tat. Looks suspicious to me.
Feds need to investigate quickly.
 
Could also be someone in the marketing department with a sick sense of humor.
 
The naming convention seems to be correlated with products sold under the brand name "WFX Utility." WFX Utility is a trademark of Wayfair itself:

https://trademarks.justia.com/880/35/wfx-88035475.html

My first guess is that someone at Wayfair thought it would be a good idea to give each product line or style its own name. This is what IKEA famously did with (primarily Swedish) place names. It appears to me Wayfair is applying the same tactic with personal names.
Naming products and ranges is standard in retail (i bought an 'Alice' dress yesterday because the 'Simone' is out of stock. But these are actual clothes- not people!)
But of all the millions names they could choose they chose obscure names of missing people? Otoh why would you need to use your traffiked victims real name?
 
... But of all the millions names they could choose they chose obscure names of missing people? ...

The choice of names illustrated in the early allegation tweets is indeed odd. Cursory browsing at the Wayfair website shows they use lots of names for labeling particular products or product lines - place names, last names and first names.
 
FWIW ... I haven't found evidence that any of these accusers noticed the entire company's name might be touted as a clue:

Wayfair / Waif Fare :reyes:

:mcoat:
 
Wayfair also has an interesting history of soliciting government contracts and obtaining one in 2019 selling institutional furnishings for the children's' detention centers in Texas. There was a protest by employees when this became public. My own experience with them is that they always come up on furniture searches in the US and they're always overpriced for what the item is. They are a middlemen for many many smaller sellers and they don't name their items. The Samiyah line includes both a $35 item and a $7299 (discounted) sofa. Snopes has shown this reddit-origin conspiracy theory factually incorrect on several counts which pretty much shoots down the theory . Click here. Apparently the sku-number "link" goes to a foreign database that returns an image of a young girl for all number searches - which is a whole other question. I doubt that they expect to sell anything on line at $14K, at that price it's a negotiation. But as one who has purchased display and office furniture, it's not an out of line price for a company that lets executives express their ego in their furniture. (The $9000 cushion is certainly a typo - should be $99.99 and too high at that.) Wayfair is a $9 billion publicly held corporation, and you would expect them to have a much better communications staff than their lame statement on this nonsense offered - "There is, of course, no truth to these claims," a Wayfair spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider. "The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced." This really gets my goat because they are paying people enough to be able to say "Wayfair, Inc., which has $9 B in sales and employs XX people world-wide, joins the world in horror of human trafficking. The unjustified claims being made about our products are of course grossly inaccurate - our commercial line of cabinets is fairly priced. We understand that this has brought up a concern for many and we have reached out to [name the UN agency] to see how we can help to eradicate this scourge."
 
Thousands of minor age children go missing and are not found each year, making it likely that any given name chosen for a shelf will match that of a missing child.

And way more than that are reported missing, but turn up.
 
An article on the BBC today discussed the conspiracy. Apparently a lot of the supposed missing children have actually been found.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53416247

"Some of these children are no longer missing and one woman, who was mentioned when a cabinet with her first name was linked to her alleged disappearance as a teenager, did a Facebook live refuting the claims.

She said she never went missing in the first place."
 
Like the BBC item cited above, this Associated Press article surveys the proliferation of the Wayfair conspiracy theory, connections to QAnon, and examples of alleged victims who've refuted the BS claims.

Baseless Wayfair child-trafficking theory spreads online
https://apnews.com/9d54570ebba5e406667c38cb29522ec6
 
I'm intrigued that this conspiracy theory has emerged in the past few days, when you'd have thought that CT enthusiasts would be giving all their time and attention to the Epstein/Maxwell story. So imagine my surprise when this detail emerged in a Twitter thread claiming to reveal the identity of Maxwell's apparent spouse.

Scott Borgerson? I've heard that name in connection with Ghislaine Maxwell earlier. The press probably knows about this connection already.
 
Scott Borgerson? I've heard that name in connection with Ghislaine Maxwell earlier. The press probably knows about this connection already.
That's the name in the thread, yes. I hadn't really been following Maxwell's connections before her arrest, so it's new to me. But I am actually probably more interested in the way that an apparently separate story (the Wayfair conspiracy) should have resurfaced just now, before the connection was made explicit.
 
The 17 July edition of AP's "Not Real News" refutes the following fake claims circulating with regard to the Wayfair child trafficking rumors:

CLAIM: Niraj Shah, chief executive officer of the furniture company Wayfair, has resigned amid child sex trafficking allegations against the company.

THE FACTS: Shah has not stepped down, according to a Wayfair spokesperson, and claims that the company is involved in child trafficking are part of an unfounded conspiracy theory. ...


CLAIM: Video of a six-year-old girl being instructed to show her hands and profile before jumping on a couch where she plays with a doll and talks about prices on Wayfair is evidence the online retailer is involved in human trafficking.

THE FACTS: The video is an audition tape for a Wayfair commercial that was uploaded by the girl’s mother, London-based Alphabet Agency confirmed to the AP. ...


CLAIM: Photo shows Ghislaine Maxwell with the president of operations at Wayfair.

THE FACTS: The 2003 photo shows Maxwell, a British socialite and longtime confidante of Jeffrey Epstein, with George Bamford, founder Bamford Watch Department. Wayfair, a company that sells furniture and home goods online, currently does not have a president of operations. On July 11, a photo circulated on Twitter with false claims that it showed Maxwell with Bill Hutcherson, Wayfair’s president of operations. ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/5a4574ef418e240a207e601cdf75c18a
 
Couple buys one of these desks to see which missing kid will be delivered instead, receive a desk, still believe it's true.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/ente...ona-couple-spread-instagram-rumors/5429146002

"Justin Thompson explained in the video that he ordered a $17,000 Wayfair desk to prove the human trafficking theory by revealing that the company is not actually delivering these high-priced products to buyers. The Thompsons said in the video that they will dispute the transaction with their credit card company and do not intend to pay $17,337.98 to Wayfair. "
 
I can't help being reminded a bit of W. T. Stead, who purchased a child prostitute to prove that such a trade existed - and did time at Holloway for his pains.

There are, of course, two major differences:
  1. He was right.
  2. He wasn't a complete twat.
Seriously, if there is such a thing as The Almighty, why the fuck aren't these people under an iceberg, instead of Stead?
 
I've just realised that they'll probably have to state a reason for their return on the return paperwork. And they are going to have to actually state, in writing, something along the lines of:

Because no trafficked children were included.

If that's not a good reason to have a SWAT team hammering on someone's door, I don't know what is.
 
I've just realised that they'll probably have to state a reason for their return on the return paperwork. And they are going to have to actually state, in writing, something along the lines of:

Because no trafficked children were included.

If that's not a good reason to have a SWAT team hammering on someone's door, I don't know what is.
And perhaps giving an interview with a major national newspaper stating you never intended to pay is not such a good idea.

But they did buy the desk to get a trafficked kid, so they don't appear to be full of good ideas in any case.
 
Couple buys one of these desks to see which missing kid will be delivered instead, receive a desk, still believe it's true.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/ente...ona-couple-spread-instagram-rumors/5429146002

"Justin Thompson explained in the video that he ordered a $17,000 Wayfair desk to prove the human trafficking theory by revealing that the company is not actually delivering these high-priced products to buyers. The Thompsons said in the video that they will dispute the transaction with their credit card company and do not intend to pay $17,337.98 to Wayfair. "
Clueless. If the company is doing an 'alternative' trade, they probably require paedos to have a special account with them.
So, they probably checked that and had a laugh at people who were dumb enough to pay that for a desk.
 
Back
Top