Amazon's Illegal Contraband Faucets Report of an Investigation into the Illegal and Potentially Dangerouss Faucets Sold On America's Largest Online Retailer. Updated January 8, 2026

Learn more about Illegal and Black Market Faucets In North America.

Three questions were the focus of our thirteen-month inquiry into illicit fau­cet trafficking on Amazon:

  1. How many brands of illegal faucets are offered for sale on Amazon,
  2. Who is selling them, and
  3. How successful are Amazon's efforts to stop the sale of illicit faucets in compliance with its policy prohibiting the sale of illegal goods on its platform?

The investigation discovered that:

  1. Around 90% of the fau­cet brands for sale on Amazon violate state and federal laws and regulations, may contain dangerous materials and harbor dangerous pathogens, and are illegal to sell in the U.S. and/or illegal to install in a drinking-water system in the U.S. or Can­ada.
  2. Only 10% of the brands available on Amazon are certified as having undergone testing to ensure they are free of pathogens, including Cryp­to­spor­i­di­um, Legion­el­la, Naeg­ler­ia fowl­eri, Vib­rio spp., and Pfies­teria, as well as harmful mineral compounds like lead, ar­sen­ic, mer­cu­ry, and cad­mi­um.
  3. All but a few of the 850+ traffickers in illegal faucets selling on Amazon.com are located in China, and all but four of them sell faucets that are made in China.
  4. Amazon's policies promise its customers that it will not sell harmful or illegal products, yet it does not appear to be taking any meaningful steps to stop the trafficking of potentially dangerous, illegal faucets.
  5. By frequently endorsing contraband faucets as "Top Picks," "High­ly-rated," "Spon­sored," or an "Amazon Choice," and widely advertising them online, Amazon actively promotes the sale of illegal faucets.
  6. Amazon itself sells prohibited faucets. It is the second most prolific seller of contraband faucets on its website. Seventeen illegal brands are "sold by Amazon" as of the date of this report.

Skip directly to the alphabetical list of Amazon's contraband brands.

OR

Looking for a particular brand?
Shortcut the seach by clicking on the first letter of the brand name. If the brand is not in the list but you suspect it might be a trafficker, let us know at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com. We will investigate and let you know.

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Amazon has profited by millions of dollars since 2013 through the sale of illegal and potentially dangerous, mostly Chinese-made fau­cets on its website.

It sells more sink fau­cets on its platform than any other online retailer, handily beating out other web sellers such as Wayfair and Walmart, and even the big box lumber stores like Home Depot and Lowe's.

By far, the vast majority of the fau­cet brands sold on Amazon are illegal contraband – illegal to sell in the U.S. and illegal to install in a drinking water system, public or private, anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.

By enabling and even encouraging the sale of these fau­cets, Amazon is actively participating in a massive fraud on its customer base by selling fau­cets that cannot legally be used as fau­cets.

It's not that Amazon is unaware of the problem.

In a response to an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2019 exposing dozens of illegal products being sold on Amazon, the company claimed that&hallip;

"Safety is a top priority at Amazon. Products in our store must comply with relevant laws and regulations and our sophisticated tools prevent non-compliant products from being listed. … When a concern arises we move quickly to protect customers and work directly with sellers, brands, and government agencies." [1]

We did not find this statement to be even a little true.

Amazon certainly cannot claim that it does not know about the contraband faucets being trafficked on its site.

In 2017, 2020, and again in 2023, we sent letters to the company identifying the hundreds of illegal fau­cets then being trafficked on its platform — by certified mail, return receipt — so the company cannot claim it never got the letters. It did. We have the receipts to prove it.

The company has not moved "quickly" to "protect customers." Nor did it "immediately remove" illegal products as it claimed in its response to an investigation by The Markup in 2020 that found hundreds of prohibited products on its website.

It did, in fact, absolutely nothing whatsoever. And it has continued to do nothing whatsoever for more than years.

Even after the 2025 recall by the Consumer Products safety Commission of dozens of brands of Chinese faucets proven to contain dangerous levels of metallic lead, the company made no effort to identify and ban the hundreds of other brands of potentially dangerous faucets sold through its website.

The unhappy result is that Amazon now lists twice as many contraband fau­cet brands today than in 2017.

What Makes a Faucet Illegal?

Faucets are a part of your drinking-water system, and every part of that system, right down to the solder joints, is strictly regulated.

Not just anything with a shiny chrome finish that delivers water is a fau­cet, as the laws define fau­cets in North America.

To be a fau­cet, the product must be legal to sell as a fau­cet and legal to use as a fau­cet in a drinking water system.

If it is not legal to sell as a faucet and/or not legal to use as a faucet, but is advertised and sold as a faucet, then something illegal is going on.

The usual legal term for such activity is "fraud" and "conspiracy to commit fraud."

And not a little fraud, but fraud on a massive scale.

Illegal to import, Sell, Deliver, or Otherwise "Distribute in Commerce"

The sale of a fau­cet is prohibited by federal law in the U.S. if it…

This two-handle centerset bathroom sink faucet is very common and made by several Chinese manufacturers. It is sold on Amazon.com by Fri­ho, Ger­uike, Kenes, Phies­tina, and Ton­ny, among others.
All of these fau­cets are illegal contraband in the U.S. and Canada. They have not been certified to North American standards and, therefore, are potentially dangerous.
The same design, made by a different manufacturer, is sold as a fully certified, legal faucet by Lowes Stores under its