More than 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged over the weekend, Commerce Minister Serge Papin said, including shops in Paris’s Les Halles district. Among them were Hermès, The North Face and Louis Vuitton. Hours after looters went through stores at demonstration sites, listings for cosmetics, skincare and handbags began appearing on e-commerce platforms, raising concern that stolen goods were being resold.
By Monday evening, Papin and Digital Minister Anne Le Hénanff had called Vinted, French secondhand site Leboncoin, Amazon, eBay, Meta and TikTok to a videoconference and demanded the listings come down. Vinted, Europe’s leading online secondhand marketplace, said it had acted against suspicious listings. A spokesperson told Fortune that selling stolen goods, or soliciting them, is strictly prohibited on Vinted and that the company has zero tolerance for it. The spokesperson said Vinted is working with law enforcement and the French authorities and keeps adapting its checks. The same spokesperson had earlier told RetailDetail that listings for luxury items had spiked and that such volumes are unusual.
Morningstar DBRS estimates insured losses from the unrest could reach €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) if there is no further violence. France’s main retail federation, the Fédération du commerce et de la distribution, puts direct damage at several hundred million euros. On Tuesday, Carrefour cut its fiscal 2026 profit outlook because of riot damage. Chief executive Alexandre Bompard said about 50 stores were hit on the first day, many were looted and the damage was considerable. The company put the effect at €80 million to €200 million of operating income. Its shares fell as much as 15% on Wednesday, erasing about €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion) of market value.
At Monday’s meeting, the platforms agreed to report suspicious listings to investigators, watch for unusually low prices, bulk lots of new goods and items still carrying anti-theft tags, warn buyers that buying stolen goods is a crime, and publish how many listings they remove, with a first tally due within 48 hours, French tech site NeozOne reported. None of the platforms answered Fortune on whether stolen items were listed on their sites.
President Emmanuel Macron warned this week that thieves would be caught. In France, handling stolen goods can bring up to five years in prison and a €375,000 ($420,000) fine. He said those who looted would have to pay and that those who tried to bring down the Republic would be held accountable. The Senate begins debating a “casseurs-payeurs” bill on Oct. 27 that would make everyone who took part in a gathering that caused damage collectively liable.
Resale is attractive because luxury cosmetics, fragrances and electronics are small, easy to photograph and in demand. Serpil Hall, a strategic advisor at Datos Insights, told Fortune that looted items are often sold quickly, in bulk and below market price, and that proceeds move through payment accounts that are themselves a fraud problem. She said platforms can watch keywords and accounts even when proof that a listing is stolen is hard to obtain. Cybernews reported that the hashtag “October 17,” the date of many of the demonstrations, was trending on Vinted last week and then faded as theft reports increased.
European Union rules require marketplaces to collect and check trader details before they can trade, run random checks for illegal listings, and tell buyers if they learn an illegally listed product was sold. TikTok said TikTok Shop does not allow consumer-to-consumer sales and that registered businesses must show products were bought legitimately, including brand authorisation or wholesaler certification. It has a taskforce to check and remove suspicious listings and videos. An eBay spokesperson told Fortune the platform forbids stolen property and uses algorithms, data tools and specialist teams, and that it shares information with local, national and international law enforcement.
Hall said revenue from illegal digital sales often feeds money-laundering schemes moving through banks, payment processors and cards. She said the resale of stolen goods is often the last step of a payment fraud and that more regulation is needed.