It turned out to be a good old fashioned scam.
Pablo Escobar was undoubtedly the best to Netflix Narcos but adds little to the smartphone industry. An older brother of the deceased drug lord came with a high-profile foldable smartphone, but after further investigation by a much-loved tech YouTuber, we know that the Escobar smartphone brand is just as bad for you as cocaine.
It may have been a little too good to be true; the Escobar Fold 1 would be a flexible smartphone for € 350. He looks suspiciously on the Flexpai but let’s just ignore that. Not much later, the same brand came up with a gold Escobar Fold 2. And it also came to be known for… Samsung Galaxy Fold, anyone?
YouTuber and leading tech journalist Marques Brownlee went to the bottom of it after not getting the first Escobar Fold delivered. In the video below, he says that the Escobar Fold was never delivered. Instead, he received an “upgrade” months later (after ordering the Escobar Fold 2 again for around € 400).
He received the Fold 2 instead of the Fold 1, but heard nothing more from the second order. Why not? Because he ordered that second foldable smartphone under a different name. He got the device with his real, well-known and influential name, but as a “normal” consumer he heard nothing.
It all turned out to be part of a gigantic scam where initially the Flexpai and later the Samsung Galaxy Fold with a painfully bad gold sticker were “rebranded” into Escobar Fold. The devices were only sent to prominent people in the tech world and B stars were also hired to advertise the brand (unsuspectingly).
And so the brand tried to make money; by sending some very expensive Galaxy Folds to tech aficionados who would probably report about it. For example, unsuspecting consumers should be persuaded to order the device, but we would never have received it.
Brownlee, of course, best tells the whole story herself; you can check that below:
Photo @Escobar Inc.
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