Manny Ranga, 38, and his wife Violeta Perez, 37, have quickly cashed in on fears caused by the virus by buying up stocks of wipes from local Costco outlets in Vancouver, Canada and selling them for more than four times the amount online, according to a Thursday article in The Toronto Star.
“It’s a big opportunity with all these products,” Ranga told paper. “I’ve got to pay the bills. With a regular job, I won’t be making this money… I know it won’t last forever.”
The couple were said to have begun their price gouging scheme a few weeks earlier, when the emerging outbreak inspired them to go on a shopping trip for themselves. Their new business model was hatched when a woman stopped them in the parking lot and offered to pay double for their supplies.
“Everything we do, we’re in the moment,” Perez told the paper. “We’re hustlers.”
The pair frequently travel from store to store in their area, loading up their truck whenever new stocks of items like wipes and cleaning liquid become available. Bulkier in-demand items like toilet paper are less favored because they are difficult to store and ship.
When one Costco location threatened to place limits on the amount of wipes the couple could buy, Perez claimed that such a limit was “not fair” because other people were also engaging in price gouging schemes.
Although a check of the account revealed no items listed at the time of writing, one review from Thursday remarked that the “seller cancelled my order the day before delivery only to put it back online and jack up the price.”
However, Newsweek did obtain an earlier statement from the company, which insisted that measures were being taken to prevent the unscrupulous practices.
