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Monika Evstatieva
Senior Producer on the Investigations team at NPR, formerly a senior editor at New York Times Audio.
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Oct 21, 2026
France Rocked By Protests, Maryland Malls See Skin Cream Scam, A New Era for Pappas Crab Cakes
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19:33Monika EvstatievaGUEST
Yes, so one of the first things we tried to do is we wanted to visit as many stores as possible because we wanted to experience as much as we can for ourselves what was going on.
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19:45Monika EvstatievaGUEST
There are places in Maryland, we haven't traveled across the whole state, but on Main Street in Annapolis, there are actually two stores.
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19:54Monika EvstatievaGUEST
Initially, we went to one store called Vupre by the Sea, And the way you recognize immediately that it's one of those stores is you have to have a salesperson who sits outside the store and hands out free samples.
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20:08Monika EvstatievaGUEST
Like this is, like the way you can tell right away even if you cannot remember all of the names because each store has a different name and the trademarks are like 20 30 so it might be overwhelming to try to remember the products but this is one good sign and then when we were walking towards the water boom another store this looked even like a pop-up store it was uh something called house of riley But it's basically they're selling identical products.
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20:41Monika EvstatievaGUEST
They also have a store, but they also close stores and open new stores constantly because as soon as the store gets like bad press or like a lot of customers complain, they close and then several months later they can open even on the exact same location.

D. WatkinsHOST
If authorities were already hip to these companies, how do the same kinds of companies keep popping up?