Suspect websites spreading
Via Shopify, fly-by-night businesses sell dubious virus-fighting products
A popular technology company that has helped launch thousands of online retail sites has become a favorite tool for fly-by-night businesses looking to cash in on the coronavirus pandemic.
New e-commerce sites that use the company’s services are filled with wildly exaggerated claims about virus-fighting products that may not even exist.
The New York Times analyzed registrations with the company, Shopify, which allows just about anyone with an email address and a credit card to create retail websites in short order. The company, which in the past helped build such successful e-commerce sites as Kylie Cosmetics, the $1.2 billion beauty brand founded by Kylie Jenner, has registered nearly 500 new sites over the past two months with names that include “corona” or “covid,” The Times found. Untold others have been started using other names.
One of the new sites marketed an “oxygen concentration” machine for $3,080. Another had the “Corona Necklace Air Purifier,” which for $59 claimed to provide “All Day Protection.” A third offered a $299 pill that promised “AntiViral Protection” for 30 days. And sites such as CoronavirusGetHelp.com and test-forcovid19.com marketed home test kits for $29.99 to $79, none of which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Many of the sellers do not actually possess the goods, nor have they verified that the products are legitimate. Often, the sites’ operators are middlemen who fulfill customers’ orders by buying items on other websites — a kind of digital arbitrage known as “drop-shipping.” Shopify is attractive to these new businesses because its software can integrate the sites with the distant vendors, mostly in China.
Amy Hufft, a Shopify spokeswoman, said the company last week closed more than 4,500 sites related to the virus. She said sites that did not back up the medical claims they made were suspended from the platform. By Monday, nearly all the sites identified by The Times had been removed.
“Our teams continue to actively review COVID-19 related products and businesses, and stores that violate our policies will be immediately taken down,” she said in an email.
Gibril Bachouchi, a 20-year-old Canadian engineering student in Algiers, told the Times in a video call how he started his Shopify site, killcoronavirus19.com.
Bachouchi said he created the store to raise money for a hospital where his aunt works as a doctor, after hearing it was short on face masks and other equipment. His site advertised the $3,080 oxygen machine last week, and a COVID-19 testing kit for $30.40, among other products.
“I was just like, ‘I’m a 20-year-old kid — what can I do to help a bit?’ ” Bachouchi said.
Bachouchi said he used Shopify’s algorithm to set competitive prices and choose a markup. As of last week, he had made no sales.
“Shopify pushes you to spend as much as you can on marketing,” Bachouchi said. “I just don’t have the money.”
Though Shopify has been policing the new sites, it also encourages its customers to go into the drop-shipping business. It offers a guide for starting such a business and makes money from them by charging a monthly fee and a percentage of sales. The Canadian company is one of the largest turnkey e-commerce sites in the world, bringing in $1.5 billion last year.