COLUMBUS – The state has sued a man from Chagrin Falls and his co-conspirators for hoarding the badly needed N95 respirator masks and selling them on eBay for nearly 18 times their pre-pandemic retail price.
eBay seller Donkey476 sold boxes of 10 N95 masks at prices ranging from $360 to $375 – with prices averaging $36.34 per mask. Prior to the #COVID19 pandemic, the average retail price was $2.05 per mask. #PriceGouginghttps://t.co/zPb0qxYY2m
— Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (@OhioAG) April 14, 2020
Mario Salwan and others, who operated an online store on eBay under the user name “Donkey476,” ramped up operations in March, buying masks, hand sanitizer and toilet paper, eventually getting hold of 1,200 of the N95 masks.
They then sold packages of 10 masks to 15 buyers at prices ranging from $360 to $375 – an average of $36.34 per mask, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average retail price was $2.05 per mask.
“There’s another word for donkey that immediately comes to mind when thinking about these folks,” Yost said.
Yost says Salwan and his co-conspirators sought to reap exorbitant profits while adding to the worsening shortage of N95 masks.
In the lawsuit, Yost says an emergency room nurse whose husband is an emergency room physician came across the listing on eBay and, when urged him to reconsider his prices, he responded by telling the woman, “You and your husband should work for free during this crisis, you are greedy!”
Hoarding an item and increasing its price constitute “an unreasonable and unlawful restraint of trade,” a violation of the Ohio antitrust and consumer protection laws, Yost said.
The lawsuit asks for restraining orders against Salwan and an order making “Donkey476” surrender all of its N95 masks to the state “in exchange for reasonable compensation.”