Facebook’s global ban on adverts for coronavirus test kits, hand sanitiser, face masks and disinfectant wipes is being easily flouted, the Guardian can reveal, while eBay is listing intensive care ventilators for sale at prices of more than £12,000.

An investigation into online markets that are flourishing during the pandemic also identified a West Yorkshire GP who was selling antibody tests to the public in an apparent breach of UK law.

An anonymous Facebook page offering Covid-19 antibody testing kits for £49.99 each, and saying it was raising funds to donate equipment to the NHS, linked to a website apparently administered by Youssef Beaini, a family doctor in Bradford.

Contacted by the Guardian, Beaini, who has appeared on the Channel 5 series GPs: Behind Closed Doors, said he was unaware that UK law prohibited the sale of kits to the public and he would cease selling the equipment.

Beaini has taken down a Facebook page called Coronavirus Antibody Tests that stated that for every four kits sold to the public, one would be donated to an NHS worker.

“I don’t want to do anything illegal,” Beaini said. “No one is testing us. We feel very anxious and nervous about this. We look with dread on what’s happened in Italy. We want to do something but I want to stay within the rules.”

The GP’s involvement in the sale of Covid-19 testing kits was uncovered by the Guardian’s digital investigations team, a group of software engineers who have been tracking the online trade of Covid-19–related products.

Q&A How we traced Covid-19 test sales Show Hide The trail began with Facebook. We searched Facebook’s ad library to find pages running banned advertisements for Covid-19 antibody tests, ventilators, face masks and hand sanitiser. One Facebook page selling Covid-19 antibody tests promised to donate one test for free to the NHS for every four sold to the general public, and linked to a site, wellclinic.co.uk, where kits could be purchased. To find out who was behind the site, the Guardian’s digital investigations team – a group of software engineers – analysed a product data sheet for the tests, available for download. The file was hosted with Microsoft OneDrive, and the metadata included the name of the user who created it, Youssef Beaini. In another digital trace, a YouTube video demonstrating how to use the test kit on wellclinic.co.uk was found to have been uploaded by a channel called The Bonds Clinic. On Twitter, Youssef Beaini, a West Yorkshire doctor who appeared on the Channel 5 medical series GPs: Behind Closed Doors, describes himself as “Dr at the Bonds clinic”. An examination of DNS records and previous incarnations of wellclinic.co.uk in the Internet Archive found that in 2018 it was advertising the Bonds clinic, which treats drug dependency and is registered to the same Bradford address from which Beaini operates as a GP. Digital investigations team: Joseph Smith, Michael Barton, Reetta Vaahtoranta.

The sale of coronavirus testing kits to people who are not medical professionals is prohibited, as the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has not approved the tests’ use at home.

The agency said it is investigating a large number of allegations of “non-compliance” relating to the selling of medical devices for use during the outbreak.

Government laboratories have been evaluating antibody tests kits over the last week but have yet to find one that works. Health secretary Matt Hancock today repeated warnings not to use them at home, saying they could give “false assurance”.

“At the moment we haven’t got a reliable test,” he told the BBC. “Saying to somebody we think you’re immune because of this test result and they’re not can be a really dangerous.”

Ventilators on eBay

The Guardian also identified that eBay, the auctions website, appears to have facilitated the sale of two high value ventilators designed for use in intensive care units by sellers who seem to have no previous record of dealing in medical equipment. One, a Chinese machine, sold for £12,800 on 26 March.

The seller, who appears to specialise in second-hand TV parts and mobile phones, had previously received negative eBay reviews including one that warned “do not buy from this guy”.

The Guardian found a retailer in China selling the same kind of ventilator for $2,100 (£1,609), a fraction of the eBay price.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Screengrab of the eBay listing

A spokesperson for eBay confirmed the item had been purchased and said if it does not arrive the buyer will be entitled to a refund. A second listing offering an identical machine from the same seller was removed permanently from the site as it was in breach of its medical devices policy and restrictions have now been placed on the seller’s account.

Another Chinese–made ventilator was sold on eBay for £8,790 on 20 March. Records suggest that vendor previously sold mobile phone cases before turning to antibacterial wipes. eBay said the seller had provided documentation to justify the sale, and had subsequently cancelled the transaction due to “low stock”. It said the buyer had received a full refund.

“We are monitoring listings in this category extremely closely,” said an eBay spokesperson. “If any listings are found to be in breach of our policies we will take the necessary action, which can include account suspension.”

The pandemic has led to a flurry of activity on Facebook. The platform pledged on 19 March to introduce a global ban on adverts for and sales of coronavirus-related products including test kits, masks, hand sanitiser and disinfectant wipes.

While Facebook has been rapidly removing paid advertising on the platform, it appears to have allowed some pages that produce banned ads to remain live, allowing sellers to continue promoting their products. On one morning this week, searches revealed 17 Facebook pages hawking Covid-19 test kits and 18 pages selling other forbidden products.

The Facebook pages either promote products, link to external websites where they can be bought, or give phone numbers and other means of contact for vendors. One popular Facebook page, called Covid-19 Tests, which had 5,000 likes, offered visitors a dialogue box to contact the seller.

The vendor responded to one message saying they had sold out but added: “Will have more stock end week, I will send you a link. How many kits did you want?”

After being alerted by the Guardian, Facebook began deleting such pages as well as paid adverts. “Facebook is focused on preventing the exploitation of this crisis for financial gain,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “We have removed millions of ads, posts, pages and Marketplace listings for the sale of masks, hand sanitiser, surface disinfecting wipes and Covid-19 test kits, including all of those shared with us by the Guardian.”

The MHRA is particularly worried about sales of rapid testing kits, which take 10 minutes and do not require laboratory analysis. They look similar to pregnancy test sticks and use a drop of blood taken from a finger prick to measure the presence of antibodies. Certain antibodies are a strong indication of whether a person has previously contracted Covid-19.

Some test kits claim to have a CE (Conformité Européenne) mark that denotes the product was approved by regulators. However, guidance issued by Public Health England states: “There are no CE-marked tests for home use and it is illegal to supply such products.”

These appear to be the tests that were being sold by Beaini, the Bradford GP, via a website that had no contact name, no phone number and no email or postal address.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Youssef Beaini said: ‘We will get all the pages deleted and taken down so that no illegal activity can occur.’ Photograph: Bonds Clinic

The Facebook page promoting Beaini’s kits was also anonymous. It said it was run by “employees of state-run organisations who are on the frontline of coronavirus exposure from their jobs”.

It stated: “We have been offered for purchase a supply of fingerprick coronavirus testing kits and have distributed 16 of these for free to NHS staff. However, we need to cover costs and so some of these will now be available to the general public to buy.”

The Facebook page promised that for every four tests sold for £49.99, one would be donated to NHS staff. The “wellclinic” website linked to from the Facebook page did not declare the name of the manufacturer of the test kits, meaning its claims about their certification and reliability were impossible to verify.

Screengrab of a Facebook ad for antibody tests

Beaini declined to say whether NHS colleagues were involved in his kit-selling scheme or why he had chosen to sell the equipment via an anonymous Facebook page and website.

He said he had bought some of the kits from China for £20 each and donated 29 of so far to frontline workers.

“Everything has to stop immediately,” he said. “We will get all the pages deleted and taken down so that no illegal activity can occur.”

He later said via email that only two kits had been sold to non-healthcare professionals, and those buyers had now been refunded and told to “disregard the results”. He described the sale of the kits to the public as “an oversight”.

Chloroquine

The Guardian’s digital investigations team also discovered an apparent surge in sales on the dark web of chloroquine, after Donald Trump touted use of the anti-malarial drug for the treatment of Covid-19 despite concerns that its potential benefits are not yet proven.

Established sellers of illegal recreational and prescription drugs on anonymous marketplaces such as Empire and Kingdom have now turned to advertising chloroquine as a cure for Covid-19.

PowerHouse, a dark web merchant selling recreational drugs including MDMA and speed, posted five adverts for chloroquine on Empire last week. Another Empire seller was claiming the drug “kills coronavirus”.

Alex Guirakhoo, a research analyst at the online security firm Digital Shadows, said the ads began appearing when Trump “started saying it could be a fix”.

He said: “You have these sellers on Empire typically involved in selling drugs and all of a sudden they are selling face masks in bulk quantity of 6,000 pieces. Now it’s the same people selling chloroquine.”