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Founder of popular "$4 smartphone company" arrested for fraud

The founder of Ringing Bells, the company behind the Freedom 251 smartphone that sold for less than $4, has been arrested for fraud.
By
February 24, 2017
Photo by Gadgets 360

Last year, an Indian company called Ringing Bells released the world’s cheapest smartphone called the Freedom 251. The budget device was priced at just 251 rupees, which is less than $4. It now looks like the company’s founder, Mohit Goel, has gotten himself into trouble with the law.

Here’s what happened. Someone paid 3 million Indian rupees to Ringing Bells for an order of handsets but unfortunately received less than half of the order. What’s more, a lot of the devices he did receive turned out to be defective.

The buyer then did what everyone else would probably do in a case like this, which is to ask for a refund for the unfulfilled order. But it looks like things didn’t go quite as planned. Not only did he not receive the refund, Mohit Goel and one of his colleagues threatened to kill him and his family.

That sketchy-as-hell $4 smartphone maker is under police investigation for the Freedom 251
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Because he didn’t fulfill his order, declined to offer a refund, and more importantly, threatened to kill his customer, Mohit Goel was recently arrested in India.

It looks like business isn’t going very well for Ringing Bells, despite the “success” it achieved with the Freedom 251. The smartphone was obviously in high demand, mainly because of its extremely low price. The company said that it received almost 50 million pre-orders for the device in the first week since it was launched.