iPhone Scam That Targets The Poor

Are people really this dumb? You can just cancel your contract?
The homeless dude not withstanding because well what good does his credit do to him. He even was smart enough to admit he is surprised that he even had *good enough* credit to get 10 cellphones.

Honestly the kids who do it and hurt personal credit are stupid. The homeless guys are smart because his credit isn't doing him any good anyways and the dude who was selling his plasma for cash is an unknown.
I don't think this is worth getting that upset over, guy pays people to ruin credit, he profits. Okay, maybe a little upset but people shouldn't be so stupid, and if they are stupid should hurt (credit), maybe then they will learn not to trust some guys standing in front of the Apple store and the blood bank.
 
Man I need to make some money...am I that much of a dirtbag...

Ok..no, even though I'm in pretty rough shape financially atm and facing losing my house, even that is well below what I'm willing to stoop too.
 
Hey, Apple's getting their money apparently not a big deal of course until it's on the news and people start complaining.
 
gman said:
Hey, Apple's getting their money apparently not a big deal of course until it's on the news and people start complaining.
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Just like the Apple store kicked out the reporter, not the scammer.

Apple=Greed
 
I work in a store that sells iPhones for at&t and Verizon. While we haven't seen anyone try this on verizon yet we have seen people try it on at&t twice. AT&Ts response is it's not technically fraud or illegal even if it is immoral. thankfully we have the ability as a 3rd party retailer to do something about it before it becomes an issue and both people that have tried have been turned away. There is nothing cool about taking advantage of people who are already in a hole, those that do need to be taught some morals and this kind of thing needs to become a crime. Getting phone lines under the premise that your using someone else's credit just to get the equipment and then with the intent to terminate the line should be fraudulent.
 
This is not an Apple issue but rather a retail store issue.
It does not matter if it is a Apple phone or not it can be done with any phone.

Krazy925 said:
Are people really this dumb? You can just cancel your contract?
The homeless dude not withstanding because well what good does his credit do to him. He even was smart enough to admit he is surprised that he even had *good enough* credit to get 10 cellphones.

Honestly the kids who do it and hurt personal credit are stupid. The homeless guys are smart because his credit isn't doing him any good anyways and the dude who was selling his plasma for cash is an unknown.
I don't think this is worth getting that upset over, guy pays people to ruin credit, he profits. Okay, maybe a little upset but people shouldn't be so stupid, and if they are stupid should hurt (credit), maybe then they will learn not to trust some guys standing in front of the Apple store and the blood bank.
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You do realize if you cancel the contract you have to return the phone / pay for the phone in which case it will be more that the $200 they were offered.
 
Wait so the "victims" are paid $100 to sign the contracts but the "scammer" keeps the phone? I'm sorry, hard to feel sorry for that level of stupidity.

Hey I'll give you $500 to sign this contract for car payments, don't worry man you can cancel the contract at any time. Thanks, Bye! *Varroooom*
 
The video is misleading because it's a scam that benefits both parties. In the end, the indigent will claim incompetent and will get the contract and credit ding dismissed while keeping the cash for the deal.
 
mi7chy said:
The video is misleading because it's a scam that benefits both parties. In the end, the indigent will claim incompetent and will get the contract and credit ding dismissed while keeping the cash for the deal.
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Do you think the homeless guy cares that much? I doubt anyone will get the credit ding repaired as most of the people readily admit that they only do it because of "dire financial situations" such as rent being due. I honestly doubt they would take the time to take on the credit institutions.
Is this the same subset of the population that uses payday loans?
 
shatterstar said:
This is not an Apple issue but rather a retail store issue.
It does not matter if it is a Apple phone or not it can be done with any phone.



You do realize if you cancel the contract you have to return the phone / pay for the phone in which case it will be more that the $200 they were offered.
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Seriously? Do you actually think the homeless person cares about his credit? :confused:
 
sfsuphysics said:
Wait so the "victims" are paid $100 to sign the contracts but the "scammer" keeps the phone? I'm sorry, hard to feel sorry for that level of stupidity.

Hey I'll give you $500 to sign this contract for car payments, don't worry man you can cancel the contract at any time. Thanks, Bye! *Varroooom*
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Must be tough to not know what it means to be poor.
 
Right, so the homeless don't care about being homeless, because they desire to live the rest of their lives on the street. Misrepresentation is absolutely a part of contract law, and that is what we're seeing here. It's pretty amazing the lack of empathy here.

Further, the police don't even care. Their level of blatant disregard for financial crime is staggering. Working in banking and fraud/money laundering, I've called a local police department with a full report and breakdown of 8+ people in a credit fraud ring, who had stolen 10s of thousands from our institution's customers and circumstantially at least that much more from other institutions. They wouldn't even take the report - I had driver's licenses, addresses, names of these fraudsters and they couldn't be bothered to get off their ass.
 
Apple is a greedy scumbag company, so no surprises they'd look the other way on this scam and possibly even have employees participating in it.
 
Also, can I say how BS the non-response by everyone but Sprint was? How hard is it to show some type of emotion, that, "While XXX can't comment on a specific case, this activity you described is reprehensible and we will review our internal policies and controls to best protect consumers from this unscrupulous activity." I mean, corporations are people too, right, so shouldn't they have empathy and emotion?
 
Krazy925 said:
Do you think the homeless guy cares that much?
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You are naive. He will care enough to get it dismissed from his credit report so he can repeat the scam. It takes three to play this scam. As shown in the video Apple is allowing this scam to operate from within their stores because they need the sales number to pump their AAPL stock, the middle man to orchestrate and the indigent whose situation makes it very easy to get contracts dropped and negative credit ratings dismissed after hitting the limit of the scam (about ten iPhones/contracts per video) and play innocent victim. And, even carriers don't really care since ultimately all the losses are passed on through higher cost plans and fees to the honest paying consumers.
 
mi7chy said:
As shown in the video Apple is allowing this scam to operate from within their stores because they need the sales number to pump their AAPL stock,.
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You're thinking really high level but it may be something a bit more simple, it could just be that hes giving the manager of that store a slice of the profit.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the person running the scam winds up in a ditch somewhere. Tricking homeless people out of money is very risky.
 
striker444 said:
You're thinking really high level but it may be something a bit more simple, it could just be that hes giving the manager of that store a slice of the profit.
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Did you even watch the video? The reporter contacted Apple public relations and they continue to let this scam operate from their store.
 
Now this is first rate investigative reporting. I applaud that news station as well as the team that uncovered this. Somehow, I am absolutely not surprised that no one seems to give a crap about this type of thing going on. If a scumbag company like Apple would have actually cared, that would have been real news.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Right, so the homeless don't care about being homeless, because they desire to live the rest of their lives on the street. Misrepresentation is absolutely a part of contract law, and that is what we're seeing here. It's pretty amazing the lack of empathy here.

Further, the police don't even care. Their level of blatant disregard for financial crime is staggering. Working in banking and fraud/money laundering, I've called a local police department with a full report and breakdown of 8+ people in a credit fraud ring, who had stolen 10s of thousands from our institution's customers and circumstantially at least that much more from other institutions. They wouldn't even take the report - I had driver's licenses, addresses, names of these fraudsters and they couldn't be bothered to get off their ass.
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Financial crime isn't considered crime in America anymore, the mentality here is if it hurts someone, then its the victims 'fault' for being poor. White collar crime is hardly prosecuted.

But call them with a tip on some poor guy smoking a joint and they'll send a SWAT team and tear up his house.
 
Pretty much. Not sure where morality took the turn that, insofar as money is involved, if I am dishonest and a liar but get money out of you, it's your fault.
 
MrCrispy said:
But call them with a tip on some poor guy smoking a joint and they'll send a SWAT team and tear up his house.
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Right? We can lock guys away for life that sell LSD too. Not only was it a non violent crime, but it takes our tax dollars away to house a schlub. And yet rapists and manslaughter convicts get out of jail quicker. This country sure is messed up on it's justice, but we all know that, right?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Wait so the "victims" are paid $100 to sign the contracts but the "scammer" keeps the phone? I'm sorry, hard to feel sorry for that level of stupidity.

Hey I'll give you $500 to sign this contract for car payments, don't worry man you can cancel the contract at any time. Thanks, Bye! *Varroooom*
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I agree, I doubt very many people, be they rich or poor, would do something like this without realizing it's a scam, but of course they are willing to take part for $100 or so.


Dreaz said:
Must be tough to not know what it means to be poor.
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Sorry but being "poor" does not justify knowingly taking part in scams.
 
I wonder if the one apple employee who was handling most of the contracts gets a bonus or something from signing so many new customers. That would help explain how the homeless guys credit got through. I'd like to see how much money those guys have made off of this.
They should hit up some of the free pain clinics around here, they'd find hundreds of pill heads who'd take less then $200 and give up the phone.
 
I still cannot believe that the Apple store employees go along with it. It is pretty obvious something is up when a dude brings in homeless people for new cell phones that something is up.
 
I have to assume that the carriers being taken for a ride on this must have insurance to cover these things or they would be screaming bloody murder.

If for example AT&T pays Apple $300 per phone, they would be out $3000 in phones just from the contracts this one homeless guy filled out on a single day and unless they recover that loss somewhere they would surely want to stop this in it's tracks.
 
I'm sorry, I think I am just too cynical these days. I don't think the poor people are being taken advantage of, not most anyway. Like maybe one in ten don't know the deal. Look, those store clerks gota be in on it too you know. Some dude in rags wanders in smelling bad and wants to by an iphone the store attendant isn't going to know what's up? Ain't know way a credit check is going to come up clean. That's why the scammers are in the store, their boy behind the counter has been paid. And the poor people, shit, they know they got nothing, most are just playing dumb like they don't know how things work, shit poor people know how things work just fine. They know what's going on from end to end and they just don't see a big down side to getting caught, they got nuthing for anyone to take from them anyway and that bleeding heart dude that is crying for them at the shelter is such a smuck. He's been getting snowed by these people for so long he can't even smell the stink anymore.

I am sorry guys and maybe it doesn't seem very noble of me, but this just sounds too stupid to me to be straight.
 
Pretty typical of Denver police to refuse to get involved. There are many reasons I moved from Denver to Parker, and that's one. At least they aren't as corrupt as Chicago area police. Denver police may be lazy bullies, but Chicago area police may as well be considered organized crime as bad as any criminal mob.
 
This is pretty crazy stuff. If you read the linked article, the reporting team confronting one of the scammers, and the dude grabbed the reporters iphone then tried to take off.
 
dgingeri said:
Pretty typical of Denver police to refuse to get involved. There are many reasons I moved from Denver to Parker, and that's one. At least they aren't as corrupt as Chicago area police. Denver police may be lazy bullies, but Chicago area police may as well be considered organized crime as bad as any criminal mob.
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IANAL but it would seem that for the police to get involved the party being scammed would need to file a complaint.
 
Isn't this a case of Apple being in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the phone company with "fake" contracts that won't actually be realized? :eek::rolleyes::p
 
Wow, these people must have been smoking weed...




Oh wait, it's Denver. They definitely were smoking weed.
 
Based on the numerous articles that have been posted about shady apple genius employees I'm not surprised by this at all.
 
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