Last week, millions of ambulatory flesh sacks used up precious hours of their finite lives standing on lines to pickup the newest iPhone the instant it was available. At least some of those people were elderly Asians who promptly sold the phones to sketchy buyers, which were likely shipped to China because of their huge resale value. One woman claims she was falsely arrested by police for doing just this.
"It’s frightening to think the NYPD is using its resources to have police officers sit outside the Apple store to try to trap people into selling them iPhones," lawyer Robert Brown told the Daily News about his client, Hui Lin.
Lin, 51, is a Chinese immigrant who makes $8-an-hour as a seamstress in the Garment District. She and her husband camped out in front of the midtown Apple store for days to buy a dozen new iPhone 6's for her sons, nieces and nephews. "They’re desperate for the iPhones — the new models," she told the News through a translator. "An iPhone costs three weeks of wages!"
An undercover cop approached her after she left the store and asked how much she was selling them for; although she claims she told him she wasn't selling it ("I said, no, I don’t want to sell it"), she was still arrested. She says she was held for seven hours, deprived of her asthma medication and water, and wasn't offered a translator. The phones were confiscated as evidence, and she was given a desk appearance ticket for allegedly operating as an unlicensed vendor.
Police claim they observed Lin trying to sell the phones to two men for $850 each before she was approached by the undercover office.
Below, you can watch Casey Neistat's video about the iPhone lines and people reselling.
