$1 million stolen in UK coronavirus scams

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/06/1-million-stolen-in-uk-corona.html

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Ebay and Amazon are rampant with such scams. Demand will only continue to skyrocket, making the public increasingly vulnerable to both scammers and price-gougers. I wouldn’t hold my breath that the current US administration or UK government will do what needs to be done. Even if they do invoke emergency production powers for scarce goods, it’s almost certain to be bungled, and between Trump’s isolationist trade war and Brexit, production pipelines are already strained as it is. As for going after scammers, they can’t even manage that when there isn’t a pandemic.

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Screenshot from the Full Post…

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Reports in the news of $99 for two bottles of hand sanitizer and similar prices for isopropyl alcohol
I have sugar, and still, and a huge bulk bottle of aloe vera gel. Making sanitizer for my friends at cost.

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There’s a special place in hell for fuckers who rip of people like that. Right next to the place for the scaremongers who enable them.

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I’ve seen the reports - but I can’t find anything close to those prices on eBay, where purell is freely available for a fairly normal price. At the moment I’m thinking that there’s a good chance the reports may just be outrage porn.

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One of my clients is a hospital north of Seattle. Someone broke into their warehouse and stole all of the face masks they had in stock.

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I’ve come across a few gougers over the last week, but nothing as extreme as that.

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I have personally seen folks reselling for twenty a (smallish) bottle, so I am not quick to discount the reports

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I’ve been finding people on ebay selling the 1.5 ounce bottles of hand sanitizer for the same price I would expect to pay for a quart of the same. The schtick is that they don’t specify the size, usually, and they sell in ‘bulk’ lots. Haven’t researched the face masks.

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“A fool and his money are soon parted.” Proverbs 21:20 KJV
Oddly, I had no idea this came from the Bible.

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You misspelled “elected”

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Listen, it takes HUGE amounts of attention to get any one word right. The only way I get anything right is by looking over and over and over again. If I only get one thing wrong, I’m doing good.

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