France · Amazon · Meta · Fortune Technology
Looters hit 3,000 French businesses. Within hours, the haul was trending on Vinted under the riot’s date
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As French protesters took to the street this week over the country’s escalating debt crisis, poor school conditions, and political gridlock, retailers were caught in the crossfire.
Key facts
- Retail theft has become a growing problem as organized retail crime becomes more sophisticated, ballooning from a $45 billion problem in 2024 to a projected $53 billion, according to security firm
- Its shares fell as much as 15% on Wednesday, wiping out about €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion) in market value
- Europol’s European Money Mule Action identified 10,759 “money mules,” or individuals who transfer money from accounts illegally, and 474 recruiters in 2023
- The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority found in a September report that firms closed 238,396 suspected mule accounts in 2025, an increase from 233,269 the year
Summary
More than 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged over the weekend, according to Commerce Minister Serge Papin, including shops in Paris’s Les Halles district. By Monday evening, Papin and digital minister Anne Le Hénanff had summoned Vinted, French secondhand marketplace Leboncoin, Amazon, eBay, Meta, and TikTok to a videoconference to demand the listings come down. Vinted, Europe’s leading online secondhand marketplace, said it had taken steps to mitigate suspicious listings on its platform. “The sale of stolen goods, or soliciting them, is strictly prohibited on Vinted, and we have zero tolerance for it,” a Vinted spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.