The Escobar Phone scam saga has finally come to an end

They were Samsung phones with golden stickers connected them.

The erstwhile CEO of the institution that marketed the sketchy-looking Escobar Fold 1 and Escobar Fold 2 phones — which you whitethorn retrieve from a 2020 video from Marques Brownlee — has pleaded blameworthy to fraud and wealth laundering, according to the US Department of Justice.

In a plea agreement, United States attorneys item however Olof Kyros Gustafsson and Escobar, Inc. took orders for the phones and different products branded with the likeness of the cause lord Pablo Escobar, seeded products with tech reviewers and societal media influencers to “in bid to effort to summation demand,” did not present the products to customers, and transferred and laundered lawsuit wealth to “use the funds for their ain idiosyncratic use.” 

In Brownlee’s video, helium unboxed an Escobar Fold 2 telephone shipped to him and recovered that it was conscionable a Samsung Galaxy Fold — a telephone that outgo astir $2,000, acold much than the $400 Escobar Inc. was selling it for — with a golden sticker connected it.

Escobar Inc. besides sold a $500 “Escobar Flamethrower” that was “modeled after” The Boring Company’s Not-A-Flamethrower, the $500 “Escobar Gold 11 Pro Phone” that was “marketed arsenic a refurbished Apple iPhone 11 Pro,” and Escobar Cash that was “marketed arsenic the world’s archetypal ‘physical cryptocurrency,’” according to the plea agreement.

Instead of sending products to paying customers, Gustafsson mailed them a “‘Certificate of Ownership,’ a book, oregon different Escobar Inc. promotional materials” to make a mailing record, the DOJ says successful its property release. Then, erstwhile a lawsuit tried to get a refund for thing that wasn’t delivered, “Gustafsson fraudulently referred the outgo processor to the impervious of mailing for the Certificate of Ownership oregon different worldly arsenic impervious that the merchandise itself was shipped and that the lawsuit had received it truthful the refund requests would beryllium denied.”

A justice has scheduled a sentencing proceeding for December 5th, wherever Gustafsson faces up to 20 years successful national situation for the fraud-related counts and up to 10 for the wealth laundering-related counts. Gustafsson indispensable besides wage arsenic overmuch arsenic $1.3 cardinal successful restitution.