New York Daily News – by Shayna Jacobs
A garment worker who had a pink tote bag full of hotly sought after new iPhones is iRate with cops she says falsely arrested her and accused her of trying to sell them.
Hui Lin, 51, says she spent days camped out in front of the Fifth Ave. Apple store so she could buy a dozen iPhone 6s for her sons, nieces and nephews.
“They’re desperate for the iPhones — the new models,” the Chinese immigrant said of her family, adding, “An iPhone costs three weeks of wages!”
Between Lin and her husband, they scooped up the phones at the two-per-person limit, waiting on line overnights beginning on Sept. 19, paying in the $700 to $800 range per gadget using a mix of cash and credit cards.
After a sleepless night on Tuesday, she left the store with her husband and nephew with iPhones Nos. 11 and 12 and was approached by a tall man on the street, she said.
He asked if she had an iPhone. He then asked her, “How much?”
“I said, no, I don’t want to sell it” — and then the undercover officer slapped her in cuffs, she told the Daily News through a Chinese interpreter.
The petite mother of grown children, aged 26 and 22, was put in an NYPD transport van with other suspects and taken to the Midtown South Precinct to be booked.
She said it took over seven hours for her to be released, and that she was deprived of her asthma medication and water. She also said she couldn’t understand what she’d been arrested for, and police didn’t provide her with a translator.
She was given a desk appearance ticket for allegedly operating as an unlicensed vendor and ordered to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court on Oct. 18.
“I never met a judge in my life,” she said. “I feel very scared.”
Adding insult to injury, police also vouchered the phones as evidence — and only acknowledge having 10 of them.
Lin’s lawyer, Robert Brown, said he would ask prosecutors about the allegedly missing items and said it would be “troubling” if the officers involved stole the phones.
He called his client’s arrest a sham.
“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,” Brown said.
Police said they observed Lin trying to hawk phones to two men for $850 a piece before she approached the undercover. They also denied she asked for a translator or medication.
While there have been multiple reports of people snapping up the new iPhones in hopes of reselling them in China and other second-hand markets, Lin insists that’s not what she was doing.
Lin, who makes $8-per-hour as a seamstress in the Garment District, insisted the phones were just for family who live locally.
She said she was supposed to be reimbursed for some and that others were gifts.
With Rocco Parascandola
“She also said she couldn’t understand what she’d been arrested for, and police didn’t provide her with a translator.”
Stupid b#tch!!!
That’s because this is an ENGLISH speaking country, and if you LIVE here, you should DAMN WELL BE ABLE TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE, MORON!!!
Anyway, I think you’re a lying sack, and really were trying to re-sell those phones.
yea and?
if you own something, it’s yours to sell if you choose.
she is supposed to be in a free capitalist country, not a communist one.
if i had been in that position and someone asked if i’d sell one,
i’d ask what they are willing to pay – it’s my fone, and everything has a price.
are they going to go after everybody selling a fone on ebay next?
is it an apple specific secret law, or does it include samsung,HTC etc?
does it have to be new, or can they now jump you if it’s a few months old?
i’d be carefull walking down the street if i was you – they may jump you and accuse you of trying to sell them your 2year old fone!
you know, the reason they want to introduce the need for permits to enter or fotograph forrests is probably because they want to build gulags in them for people doing unlawfull stuff like “selling stuff” or posting on the net!
get ready for the purge!!!
Apparently irony is wasted on you.
My point was that if there hadn’t been a LANGUAGE PROBLEM in the first place, she may have very well been able to convince the cops of what she is claiming. Being unable to speak ENGLISH, in an ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRY, she already had 2 strikes against her when it comes to dealing with the cops.
Clear enough, or do I need to draw you a picture.
she probably could speak english or she wouldnt have been able to get the fones.
asking for an interpreter if english is not your first language is her right, and a very old trick to protect yourself from lying by police.
it’s also the right of english speakers in non-english speaking country’s.
anyway, she’s lucky they didnt taze, beat and shoot her to keep ALL the fones.
she has receipts with IMEI numbers on them, so she can identify the stolen handsets easy enough, and tie them to the thieves by the IMSI numbers on the thieves sim-cards.
stealing fones is dumb – they are totally trackable!
A cops street word has no value left for the tax payer. So all cops ar going tohave to wear cams. Or evidence is going to have to be looked at. She bought 12 phones and only 10 are with the police. 2 cops just got fired.