A Surprisingly Convincing Conspiracy Theory That Wayfair Furniture Is Secretly Involved in Human Trafficking Goes Viral

Most conspiracy theories, especially these days, are absolutely ludicrous.  This one has more legs.

Someone on Reddit posted a conspiracy theory on Thursday about Wayfair, which is an online furniture e-commerce company.  The theory is:  Some of their products are a front for human trafficking.

The key evidence is some storage cabinets listed on the site for more than $13,000 each.  The cabinets all had odd names too, like Yaritza Storage Cabinet, Neriah Storage Cabinet, Samiyah Storage Cabinet, and Alyvia Storage Cabinet.

The theory:  People who were ordering these absurdly overpriced cabinets were actually ordering a PERSON.

And it turns out those weren’t the only insanely overpriced items on Wayfair with suspicious names.  People found basic pillows, rugs, and more selling for five figures on the site, and also with obscure human-sounding names attached.

When someone contacted Wayfair, the overpriced cabinets suddenly disappeared from their site.  And Wayfair has been a supplier to migrant detention camps on the U.S.-Mexico border, so the trafficking pieces start to fall together.

Wayfair has denied everything, of course.  They say third-party companies can list products on their site, and all of the overpriced products come from other companies that they have nothing to do with.

But is it possible this conspiracy theory is true?  Snopes investigated and found no credible evidence, and even debunked a lot of the “investigative” evidence people on Reddit thought they found . . . so what’s going on?

One person on Reddit had two more grounded explanations for what could be going on.  One:  The companies list their products for that much hoping to get people with an unlimited budget, like governments, to buy them at crazy markups.

And two:  The products are used to launder money.

Stay tuned, I guess.  (Reddit / Gizmodo / Snopes / BroBible / Newsweek)

(Here’s a picture of the cabinets, before they were removed by Wayfair.)