Homeless people, fresh from use as living Wi-Fi hotspots and coding-lesson recipients, are now being scammed by a rich Californian who promised to pay them to wait in line for new, golden iPhones, then left them with nothing.
CBS Los Angeles reports that in Pasadena, California, almost 100 homeless people were paid to wait in line overnight for iPhone vouchers by a single wealthy businessman. But some voucher holders never actually got phones, and many of the homeless people who had camped out all night received zilch when their iPhone-loving benefactor reneged on the deal.
This KTLA video (flagged by Sam Biddle) shows the chaotic scene at the Pasadena Apple Store, where a line-waiter tells the story of how he and dozens of other homeless people in the Pasadena area were rounded up, promised pizza and cigarettes, and offered $40 apiece to camp out for two iPhone vouchers (the maximum allotted to each line-waiter), then weren’t paid as promised when not every voucher holder got iPhones.
“Some people claimed they got paid their $40, but I didn’t get mine,” the man says. “If [the businessman] is a scam artist, then he should get what he deserves.”
This kind of thing always happens. And yet it’s somehow more depressing this time.
