Homeless hired to queue for iPhone

An overnight camp out for the new iPhone turned chaotic on Friday morning, when a man's plan to hire homeless people to wait in line for the coveted devices backfired, authorities said.

Dozens of people recruited at a downtown Los Angeles homeless shelter to buy iPhones at a Pasadena store were left unpaid.

They mobbed the man who had hired them, Pasadena police Lieutenant Jason Clawson told AP.

One of the homeless men was placed on a 72-hour mental-health hold after running into the street in an enraged state, Lt Clawson said.

TV news footage showed police breaking up several scuffles and calming down furious customers.

Mr Dominoe Moody, 43, told the Los Angeles Times he was driven about 16km or so to Pasadena from Los Angeles with several vanloads of people to wait in line overnight.

Mr Moody was promised US$40 (S$50) and food, but said he wasn't paid.

After Mr Moody handed the man an iPhone, the man was escorted away by police when people became angry with him.

"It didn't go right. I stood out here all night," Mr Moody told the newspaper, adding that he has no way to get back to Los Angeles.

The would-be entrepreneur, whose name was not released, was clutching a bag stuffed with iPhones when he was escorted into a police cruiser and driven away at around 9.30am.

The man did nothing illegal, and police were not investigating the incident, Lt Clawson said.

Most of the people recruited to wait in line weren't paid by the man, Mr Moody said, estimating that he had brought 70 to 80 people to the store.

According to various accounts, the businessman - who refused to identify himself but said he planned to resell the phones overseas at a large profit - had arranged for the homeless people to be given vouch-ers which enable them to buy phones.

"It's not illegal," the man said in a brief interview with TV reporters. "I'm buying them at full retail price."

But he had not given them money to actually buy the phones.

When the doors opened, the homeless flooded the store, but most of their vouchers appeared to have been unuseable.

The businessman managed to buy at least a handful of phones before the store told him he was done, and ordered him out.

The man then declined to pay the homeless people whose vouchers were not used, witnesses and police said.

"He was cheating us," said Mr Calvin Windell Pleasant, who has lived on skid row for years.

In a separate incident hours earlier at the same store, two men were arrested after getting into a fistfight. Nobody was injured.

Police estimated that at least 200 people were on the sidewalk outside the store overnight. Some had been there for several days.

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