Matt Colvin is a price gouger and profiteer who confessed in the New York Times to buying over 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and other essential sanitary supplies, and then reselling them on Amazon for as much as $70 each. From the article:

"On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States was announced, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.

Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from 'little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,' his brother said. 'The major metro areas were cleaned out.'

Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, 'it was crazy money.' To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic."

Colvin is a resident of Tennessee, where this practice is illegal under Tennessee code § 47-18-5101. Colvin's account has already been suspended by Amazon for violating their price gouging policies, but he remains in possession of tens of thousands of dollars worth of desperately needed supplies. In a statement, Amazon said:

"Price gouging is a clear violation of our policies, unethical, and in some areas, illegal. In addition to terminating these third party accounts, we welcome the opportunity to work directly with states attorneys general to prosecute bad actors."

We need the attorney general of Tennessee to begin an investigation into this immediately, and work with Amazon to apply the appropriate penalties. By prosecuting Colvin, we will set a strong example that illegal price gouging has consequences.