In a plea settlement, United States attorneys element how Olof Kyros Gustafsson and Escobar, Inc. took orders for the telephones and different merchandise branded with the likeness of the drug lord Pablo Escobar, seeded merchandise with tech reviewers and social media influencers to “so as to try to extend demand,” didn’t ship the merchandise to clients, and transferred and laundered buyer cash to “use the funds for their very own private use.”
In Brownlee’s video, he unboxed an Escobar Fold 2 telephone shipped to him and located that it was only a Samsung Galaxy Fold — a telephone that price practically $2,000, excess of the $400 Escobar Inc. was promoting it for — with a gold sticker on it.
Escobar Inc. additionally offered a $500 “Escobar Flamethrower” that was “modeled after” The Boring Company’s Not-A-Flamethrower, the $500 “Escobar Gold 11 Professional Cellphone” that was “marketed as a refurbished Apple iPhone 11 Professional,” and Escobar Money that was “marketed because the world’s first ‘bodily cryptocurrency,’” in line with the plea settlement.
As a substitute of sending merchandise to paying clients, Gustafsson mailed them a “‘Certificates of Possession,’ a ebook, or different Escobar Inc. promotional supplies” to create a mailing file, the DOJ says in its press launch. Then, when a buyer tried to get a refund for one thing that wasn’t delivered, “Gustafsson fraudulently referred the fee processor to the proof of mailing for the Certificates of Possession or different materials as proof that the product itself was shipped and that the shopper had acquired it so the refund requests could be denied.”
A choose has scheduled a sentencing listening to for December fifth, the place Gustafsson faces as much as 20 years in federal jail for the fraud-related counts and as much as 10 for the cash laundering-related counts. Gustafsson should additionally pay as a lot as $1.3 million in restitution.