Hold my Escobar

Yash Yadav
3 min readJul 3, 2020

What comes to mind when you hear that name? Drugs, kidnappings, murders? Narcos!
But not all that today. What are we talking about here then? Is it not related to Pablo Escobar?
Well, it is. But not entirely. Escobar Inc. is the Escobar holding company established in 1984 by Roberto Escobar — brother of Pablo Escobar.

The past of this brand is fun to explore but for now, let’s just look at the online presence of the company — It ain’t too shabby. It’s a pretty recent story really. These guys were on a rampage mission to kill Apple and Samsung. and The Boring Company. and Trump.

How would you proceed to out-market such established makers?
Step #1: You create a graveyard (a website in this case).
Step #2: Beat and burn their products to death in youtube videos to go viral.

That’s it. Simple steps. Minimal investment. They had some extra cash lying around because illegal activities have earned them well.

To carry this out, they created websites RIPSAMSUNG.com and RIPAPPLE.com and also launched Youtube videos with flashy women murdering* the damn devices worth $$$ in front of your indigent self. Check ’em out:

Warning: Flashy content, don’t play on the family TV

Samsung folded and Apple been eaten, what do they have on the table for us? Scam.

Lol, that was quick but offered Escobar fold, followed by Fold 2 and Escobar Gold 11 pro as alternatives. Up for more flashy videos? Here are the promos:
Escobar Fold 1; Escobar Fold 2; Escobar Gold 11 Pro

What else is flashy: The price. The damn folding phone is available for $400 and the Gold 11 pro for $500. Even when they are nothing but rebranded Samsung fold and Apple iPhone 11 pro. Oh, the irony - “I kill business by selling their products myself”.

…Except that they’re never delivered. But you don’t get nothing. Your half a grand does get you a book!

The pre-success story

There’s a lot more to this holding company in the present times, I wouldn’t just include all here:

Samsung sued Escobar for the RIPSAMSUNG, and without a surprise, they won it. The website’s down and so is RIPAPPLE now. Failed lawsuit proudly posted on their official website.

Escobar sued Apple for $2.6 billion. Roberto Escobar alleges his life being endangered because of a security issue in facetime. (and not because of his past?) The lawsuit is currently active at the time of writing this, Apple is looking into the facetime issue. Status proudly updated on their official website.

In the past Escobar Inc has accused Elon Musk’s The Boring company for stealing their idea of a propane torch and selling it as “Not a Flamethrower”.

Escobar’s cryptocurrency. They “launched” ESCOBAR stable coin last year. Each coin could be brought for $0.25 and then was marked to be valued at $1 = 1 ESCOBAR. Stable. Except that, again, the ICO never happened.
Buy for yourself from a website called escobartrump.

Escobar created website to collect funds to impeach Trump. Seems to be pretty legit, impeachdonaldtrumponow.

Come for more

This post is a part of my Knowledge•Day newsletter, where I pick up random topics to discuss about. Read my other issues here:

https://knowledgeday.in

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Yash Yadav

Software developer with interest in open source and love for Linux! I also have a non-tech blog-letter: https://KnowledgeDay.in/