The main guy laid out 30 seats when I arrived and then sold them off at $50 each to people who would purchase one or two iPhones for him, there was a network of at least 30-40 people, all Asian. He was then giving them gift cards as payment and when registration began he would get word from earlier on in the line and update his clan of what to buy (namely all 128GB models in Silver, then Space Grey) first he told them to get pluses, then when they sold out to the first group of about 40 he changed it to 6's, 128GB of whatever they could get.
When I first got there and questioned the 30 empty seats he said they were for his 'friends', then random Asians started sitting down, they didn't appear to know each other, or were pairs that didn't interact with others in the group of 'friends'. When he directed a young Australian guy to sit in front of me I asked (pissed off) if he bought his way in, he said he did, $50.. I alerted security, the Aussie guy denied - then it happened again with another 5 young Australians, again alerted security.. they threw the main guy out (seemed to be 3-4 operating it) but he was back again at 5:30am, sneaking off with people (obviously to accept payment away from security cameras) and bringing them back 5 minutes later into the clan.
Security were powerless, they said they had no footage of money being exchanged and they basically couldn't do anything even though 5 people had reported seeing him exchange money. They should have thrown the lot of them out. But really Apple should have been numbering the line prior to closing at 9pm.
The operation was at its most obvious during registration when the people buying the phones for him were unsure of what colour to get and would run over to him asking what he wanted.
It was extremely disappointing to watch for 16 hours.
