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Officials in France are pressing online platforms like eBay and Vinted to remove items that were stolen during public disturbances over the weekend.
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Goods Looted During Riots in France Hit Resale SitesBy Jenny Gross
Jenny Gross is a business correspondent who writes about consumer businesses in Europe.
Oct. 22, 2026
The online listings started appearing just hours after the looting in France. For sale were a variety of items — handbags, skin care products, lip glosses — suspected of being stolen by people who had smashed windows and emptied stores in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities over the weekend.
Protests in France, which started over conditions in schools and broadened into demonstrations against the rising cost of living, descended into unrest on Saturday and Sunday. Several government buildings were damaged and more than 3,000 shops were looted, leading to the arrest of more than 2,500 people, officials said.
In Paris, many of the shops across Les Halles were looted and vandalized, while the Place de la Bastille and Place de la Concorde became center points for standoffs between the police and protesters. Stores that were broken into included Louis Vuitton, Céline, Hermès and the North Face, as well as video game shops, pharmacies and electronics stores. A preliminary estimate showed the damage would cost several hundred million euros.
Resale sites like Vinted said this week that they were cracking down on items suspected to have been looted. Vinted said it was working with the French authorities to detect malicious behavior.
“Since this weekend, our teams have taken immediate action to identify and remove listings linked to the looting, and we have stepped up monitoring of suspicious listings,” Vinted said in a statement. “When our rules are breached, we act against the accounts involved, up to permanent bans.”
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Source: The New York Times · Jenny Gross
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