A US TikToker was shocked to find a vial of human blood in a FedEx package from fast fashion giant Shein. She’s since been on a crusade to find out how this could happen and who is responsible — but so far, it’s been a mess of incompetencies and misdirections. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride.
Anna Elliot (@anna_200.1) posted a video to TikTok last week in which she claimed she found a vial of human blood meant for Exact Sciences Laboratories when unpackaging some dresses from the controversial company, along with a can of beans. Yes, beans. More on that later.
“I just received a package from Shein that contained a vial of human blood from a testing company. It had no name, no doctor’s office, no date,” she said.
“The lady from the testing company said they’re trying to track it down. She said that it was completely mishandled, they don’t even ship to residents — they only ship blood back and forth between doctors.”
Anna said the situation was “totally odd” because she was told the blood should have to be refrigerated and would not have been shipped loose in a package.
She said she called the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), who said it would investigate the matter because the unknown vial of blood was a “major biohazard”. She said she then handed in the blood to the local police office, who told her they would test it.
“If you receive a Shein package… dump it out on a table, and look at everything before you touch it. And then sanitise your hands, be extremely careful,” she warned fellow TikTokers.
However, in a later video, Anna said Shein denied it had anything to do with the blood vial. A representative claimed they had looked through the company’s CCTV footage and watched the staff member packaging her items, but nothing was amiss.
“When we were made aware that a customer received a package that had been tampered with, we launched an immediate investigation,” a Shein spokesperson told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“This indicated when the package completed our quality control process and left our facility it contained only the SHEIN items ordered. We will continue actively supporting the customer in her continued investigation into what occurred once her package left a SHEIN facility.”
While initially sceptical, Anna conceded that this was a reasonable explanation.
“It does appear like what happened is someone potentially tampered with the FedEx package,” she said, because “the blood vial and the can of beans all came from America.”
After much drama with getting no answers from police or FedEx, Anna revealed she finally got in touch with a staff member at Exact Sciences Labs who was able to shed more light on the situation.
Anna said she was told that tubes like the one she found are used for cancer screenings — and, thankfully, not for any type of infection testing.
“It is an official vial, there’s proof of that now,” she said.
“It’s usually sent in a special kit, and sometimes they use FedEx. In order to ship it back after being tested, it’s usually in a styrofoam container [with] cold gel packs in it.
“Someone would have to see that it’s an official blood sample, and take it out to put it in my package… Which is terrible because someone needs to know if they’re healthy or not.”
Anna then became concerned about why the vial was placed in her package, especially because it was in there with a can of beans.
“Was the bean can there to break the vial and expose me to something? I don’t know. It is just blood from a person’s cancer screening, we verified it’s not anyone with hepatitis, AIDS, anything that we can be exposed to. But it’s still another person’s blood, I don’t want to touch it,” she said.
“It is very strange that someone would tamper with an official medical package, open it and then put it in there with a can of beans.”
After receiving these answers, Anna’s next target was FedEx, who she initially accused of being dismissive and unhelpful. However, after much hounding (and setting her TikTok followers onto the case), she received a call from a staff member.
“They were basically like, ‘Oh yeah this happens sometimes when packages get busted open in transit, and then employees just guess and they put the things back in another package, and a lot of times they guess wrong’,” she said.
“He basically acknowledged that this was probably a FedEx slip up. He then said they’re going to go to the police office and see if they can get the blood vial to test.”
Anna said FedEx was successful in obtaining the blood sample from the police, which irritated her because she was told a court order or document would be needed to get it.
However, at least she now has answers on where the blood vial came from, and potentially how it got into her package.
Still, the whole thing is quite unnerving — and she’s still waiting to find out if the can of beans and blood combination was a coincidence or not.
A spokesperson for FedEx told PEDESTRIAN.TV in a statement that the company “sincerely apologises” for Anna’s experience.
“We are committed to treating our customers’ shipments with the utmost care, and we are taking the appropriate steps to address this matter,” they said.
PEDESTRIAN.TV has reached out to Shein for comment.
