iPhone dreams: How the Hindu nationalist Twitterverse got 'scammed'

On February 15, Twitter users raised an alarm about an alleged online racket that purportedly runs into crores of rupees.

All eyes were on businessman Hiteshkumar Gordhanbhai Patel, or Neel Patel, the founder of Squeaks, a social media platform ostensibly conceived for rightwing voices. Users alleged that Squeaks and its sister venture, Naarad Pay, an online payment company, had swindled users of crores of rupees through a supposed scheme providing Apple iPhones for cheap.

The call-out campaign on Twitter was led by a user named Nishant, who alleged in a YouTube video, also featuring Abhimanyu Singh Rana, that Patel had given iPhones only to a fraction of those who paid for them.

Patel made a counter video claiming that the duo, popular among the Hindu right, were lying, and trying to corner him at the behest of his rival, one Germany-based Prabhakar Thapa.

The face-off turned one rightwinger against another, dividing them by their allegiance, or lack of it, to an iPhone scheme. “This is why we Indians were slaves for 700 years,” wrote one user. “Clearly one side is wrong and whosoever it’s will be a big loss to RW. Let's wait to hear the other side too.”

In October last year, Patel devised a canny business plan to promote Squeaks and Naarad Pay: he floated a scheme selling cheap iPhones, and sought endorsement by popular rightwing figures, some of whom seemed to have received the iPhones themselves. They include people at OpIndia, whose editor, Nupur Sharma, claimed she “chose to ‘redeem’ only what” the propaganda website needed – iPhones, that is – out of the three Rs 3-lakh coupons gifted by Patel’s company to her, OpIndia owner Rahul Roushan, and OpIndia Hindi editor Ajeet Bharti.

“These days, if you just keep muttering Hindu, Hindutva, saffron, armed forces and atmanirbhar, rightwing Twitter users will erect a business for you,” a rightwing influencer told Newslaundry on the condition of anonymity. “It’s like a disorder among rightwingers.”

The Twitter handles of Squeaks and Naarad Pay were suspended on February 17. Patel’s tweets from 2020 cannot be viewed.

However, as Twitter now plumbs the depths of this alleged fraud, and users make desperate pleas about the loss they have incurred, the endorsers have disassociated themselves from Patel through tiny tweets. It’s that easy.

Introducing the iPhone scheme, Patel had said the gadgets would be delivered within six to eight weeks of payment. When this didn’t happen, several Twitter users inquired about their orders. We reached out to more than half a dozen such users.

However, Newslaundry could not establish that Patel’s iPhone scheme was a scam, in that he tricked his customers to make money. The majority of those we spoke to had either received their phones or a full refund – albeit after a frustrating delay.

Scam or not?

A Maharashtra-based businessman, 50, told me over the phone that he had come across Patel’s offer in October last year after a popular rightwing Twitter account tweeted about it.

This customer paid for an iPhone 11 since Patel was selling it for Rs 29,449, as against the MRP of Rs 51,999. At least Rs 3,000 of this sum was attached to a cashback plan, which transferred small amounts of money to customers on a monthly basis in a Naarad Pay account.

“I didn’t get my phone after six weeks, so I began following up with them regularly,” the customer said. “I finally received the iPhone in December.”

The customer said he found the gadget to be satisfactory. However, while he was told the phone would be shipped from the United States, it had been sent from a store in Bengaluru. “That’s the only thing that itched me,” he said. Regardless, he also bought a Samsung M51 Patel was offering for Rs 14,999 — Rs 8,000 cheaper than the MRP — coupled with a yearly cashback plan.

Nitin Grover, a 40-year-old lawyer, placed an order for an iPhone 12 on October 19. When I reached out to him on Twitter, Nitin tweeted that he did not believe he was scammed, but was disappointed with Patel. Two months after his order was placed, Naarad Pay told Grover in December they did not have an iPhone of his choice of color. But after the lawyer applied for a refund in January, he duly received it in full.

“I wanted to get the phone, not my money back,” Nitin wrote. “But they followed up and ensured that I received a full refund of the amount.”

A government employee in Maharashtra, 30, was similarly left high and dry. After placing an order in October, he followed up with Patel’s company until January. “First I was told that they did not have an iPhone with the colour I wanted,” the customer told me over the phone. “When I said I could do with whatever colour was available, I was told the memory preference could not be delivered. So I applied for a refund.”

Contrary to allegations that Patel threatened those who sought accountability from him, the government employee said the six or seven emails he exchanged with the company were proper. The businessman confirmed this.

But even though this customer received a refund in January, he thinks the scheme was a scam. “My money was with someone else for four months. I want to know why,” he said. “Plus, I had paid by credit card. So even though I got the refund, I ended up losing more because I paid interest. I think it’s a scam.”

The government employee was introduced to Patel’s scheme by a friend, who told Newslaundry the refund happened because he had access to one of Patel’s business associates. “But it is possible that those who do not have such access have lost their money,” he said.

Dinesh Suthar, 28, from Jodhpur, Rajasthan, faced a similar ordeal. He had seen rightwing twitter influencers post about the cheap iPhones in October 2020. He placed an order, but emails show that but by the end of December, Naarad Pay was telling Suthar the iPhones were out of stock. “They said that they would refund the money and then I can order an iPhone through cash on delivery. I gave them a go ahead, but the iPhone never came,” he said, adding that the entire scheme was a scam to get money from a large pool of people but deliver to a select few.

Newslaundry reached out to two Twitter users who had tweeted to Patel to inquire about the iPhones. They told me that they had received the devices in January and February, respectively. One of them is Amit Saxena.

“Honestly, my experience was good,” said Saxena, who got his phone last month. “The team called me and apprised me of the delay and they were ready to refund my money. I refused to take the refund and requested them to expedite the delivery, which they did.”

Another Twitter user, Devesh, tweeted to me to say that he received his iPhone in January, although its “delivery was delayed a lot”.

We contacted Nishant and Rana and asked them to put us in touch with customers who had lost money because of the iPhone scheme. While Nishant did not respond, Rana told us he would ask those affected. “If anyone wants to talk,” he wrote, “will connect directly.”

The alarming claims of scam don’t quite figure in Patel’s gizmos bonanza. However, eGyaan, an online course founded by the businessman, faces serious allegations of fraud from a customer.

A student, 23, told Newslaundry he had paid Rs 50,000 to Patel’s eGyaan and signed up for a course on cryptotrading in December last year, which not only offered tutorials but a job that paid at least Rs 50,000 for the first few months. An email accessed by Newslaundry shows that the student indeed secured a spot for the course.

But the lecture links for the course never came. “I was scammed out of my wits,” said the student, who is now mulling over legal action against Patel. “The new batch did not start and eGyaan’s Twitter handle has disappeared suddenly. I can't reach them anymore and they haven't reached out to me.”

Who is Neel Patel?

Patel popped up on Indian Twitter in December 2019, Hindutva credo in one hand and lucrative schemes in the other. His was an intoxicating cocktail of ideological and financial flavours.

In his heyday, rightwing influencers on Twitter took to Patel like ducks to water, thanks to his Modi-loving, liberal-hating, Hindu-nationalist digital persona. He was followed by film director Vivek Agnihotri, IPL founder and fugitive Lalit Modi, and BJP national spokesperson Syed Shahnawaz Hussain. Patel’s claims of aligning Squeaks and Naarad Pay with "Make in India", the Narendra Modi government’s scheme to encourage indigenous manufacturing, and of donating to pandemic relief in the country also enabled him to score points on the Hindu right.

Newslaundry spoke to a person who has closely followed Patel’s business over the past eight months. “People are stupid. Nobody did the math when this man made tall claims,” the source said. “Everything about this man is fake.”

Patel had introduced himself to this person in mid-2020 as a Kentucky-based businessman who drove cabs in the US until 2012. His life changed, Patel had told this source, when he won a lottery worth $350 million that year. He began dealing in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and operating on a forex trading website called Penny Robot.

“He told me he had 300 employees in his companies,” the source said. “I googled him and couldn’t find much.”

Piqued, the source claims to have sent someone to verify Patel's company address in a Gujarat village filed with the Registrar of Companies. “The address didn’t exist. No one knew this man there,” the source gasped.

Patel had claimed to have received orders for 8,000 iPhones, the source recalled. “There are people I know who have ordered four phones, one even ordered 18. They thought they would cash in on this tremendous offer, even sell a couple of phones at normal rates.”

When the phones did not arrive, people began applying for refunds. Naturally, even that took weeks. “He was threatening people left, right and centre,” the source added. “He claimed that he was the son of a BJP MLA and that prime minister Modi visited his home.”

Newslaundry accessed private messages of those affected by Patel’s ventures. They fretted over delayed deliveries, the dreary customer service, their money. The frustrations were also vented out online.

'Targeted fake campaign'

A change.org petition started by a former client of Patel’s at Penny Robot levels serious allegations against him.

“I must say, initially he did make small payments to a few clients here and there, but then he would employ delay tactics on the remaining payments,” the petitioner writes, noting a pattern also seen in the iPhone scheme. “I pressured him on many occasions to keep to his promises and pay back all his clients but he had excuses after excuses.”

The petitioner also put up a supposed transcript of conversations between Patel and Penny Robot customers to showcase his “lies and delaying tactics”.

Similarly, Twitter threads and Facebook posts allege that Patel is a “scamster” who targets small investors and cuts them off when they confront him about payments.

In response, the businessman has claimed on Twitter that the allegations against him are part of a “targeted fake campaign” to tarnish his image and that they are not backed by evidence.