In its race to rival Amazon and become the next great “everything store,” Walmart leveraged its brick-and-mortar empire to grow into a major player online. And it didn’t take long for the world’s biggest retailer to build a massive digital marketplace with hundreds of millions of products and thousands of third-party sellers. But Walmart’s digital boom has a little known and much darker underside – where some sellers steal the identities of legitimate businesses so they can peddle counterfeit and sometimes dangerous products to unsuspecting customers. After CNBC shared its reporting with Walmart, the company began tightening its vetting process for both products and sellers and says it has a “zero-tolerance policy for prohibited or noncompliant products.” CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge has the story.
Correspondent: Gabrielle Fonrouge
Investigative Producer: Paige Tortorelli
Senior Investigative Producer: Scott Zamost
Senior Executive Producer: Ray Parisi
Editors: Candice Goldman, Richard Korn
Graphic Artist: Leslie Lillo
Deputy Business Editor: Jacob Pramuk
Senior Business Editor: Sara Salinas
Managing Editor: Jeff McCracken
Photojournalists: Van Applegate, Mark Aster, Alex Bedoya, David Grogan, Alex Herrera, Leroy Jackson, Gary Levens, Marco Mastrorilli, Oscar Molina, and Nate Silverman
Audio: Nate Cummin, Tony Stewart, Phil Turner, and Gary Wahlgren
Credit to : CNBC