In a September 2021 interview with The New York Times, Finman compared himself to basketball legend Michael Jordan and Proper compared himself to Nike founder Phil Knight. “When we helped him, he ended up running off with the money.”įinman and ClearCelullar founder Michael Proper met a year earlier at a fundraiser for failed contestant and former child star Brock Pierce. While the purchase agreement was sealed in the ensuing court battle, it is $300,000 one-time included Payment to Finman, a $240,000 annual salary for Freedom Phone’s founder as chief marketing officer, and a $75 payment for each phone sold, according to court filings. Finman sold the Freedom Phone trademark and its parent company Finman LLC to ClearCellular. With millions of dollars held in abeyance and disgruntled customers waiting for their phones, Finman struck a deal with ClearCellular, a Utah-based company that previously made its own phone. But the payment processors who processed the orders refused to hand over the money to Finman, apparently worried the phone was a scam. In reality, it was a rebrand of a Chinese phone that was available online for $120 - significantly less than the Freedom Phone’s $500 price tag.īuoyed by support from conservative influencers like Owens, former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone and Twitter pundit Ian Miles Cheong, Freedom Phone orders topped one million. The video was a hit, but oddly enough, Freedom Phone’s promotional materials didn’t include any technical details. “Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg censored MLK or Abraham Lincoln,” Finman said in the promotional video. His promotional video for the phone quickly went viral on the right in July 2021, with Finman promising a phone with apps for conservative media like Newsmax and One America News. In the early days of Freedom Phone, it seemed like Finman, the self-proclaimed “youngest bitcoin millionaire,” had the technology and marketing skills to pull off the development of an entirely new smartphone. Finman has even sued to stop associating his face and name with Freedom Phone in the future. In a bitter, previously unreported legal battle that began in April 2022, the men behind Freedom Phone’s backers accused each other of squandering their windfall profits - in one case on a $10,000 video game shopping spree. Two years later, however, Freedom Phone’s business collapsed due to customer complaints. “I’m holding a friggin’ phone that isn’t controlled by Apple or Google,” conservative figure Candace Owens said in an Instagram video. Even after The Daily Beast and other media outlets revealed that the Freedom Phone was just a cheap Chinese-made phone sold at a hefty premium, it was a hit, quickly selling for around $4 million, according to court records. Dubbed the “Freedom Phone,” the $500 device was the creation of bitcoin mogul Erik Finman, who promised customers a phone loaded with conservative apps and free from Silicon Valley’s liberal influence.Ĭonservative influencers encouraged their fans to buy the phone, earning a sizable cut of each sale for themselves. In the summer of 2021, conservatives angered by Big Tech’s censorship saw a new smartphone as their savior.
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