Param Sharma is a peculiar brand of social media star. The 18-year-old got famous online baiting celebrities like Soulja Boy and Rihanna into online shouting matches about their wealth from his Instagram account, itslavishbitch. But recently, his account has been dormant since Aug. 14 and BuzzFeed News has learned that Sharma's spent the last 24 days in jail after being found guilty of a misdemeanor charge for failing to make a reasonable effort to find the original owner of an iPhone that he sold on Craigslist.
Sharma's lawyer Andrew Shalaby told BuzzFeed News that his client is the first person to be convicted of this crime in the state of California. Shalaby says that Sharma posted the ad on Craigslist for a friend who found a phone on the street as a "favor" because the friend did not have any cell service to post the ad on his own.
According to Shalaby, the person who bought the phone off Craigslist brought it to the police when they tried to activate the device and a pop-up notification indicated that it had been stolen. Sharma was later taken by police from a restaurant and his bail was set at $30,000.
"The police knew him and were unhappy with his social media accounts. $30,000 bail is not something that could be done for these charges," Sharma's attorney said.
Sharma rose to fame on Instagram in 2013 and amassed 400,000 followers by posting photos that showed off his extreme wealth like a "$150,000" diamond-studded watch. He often tags celebrities in the captions of his posts, like when he called the Kardashian family a "pile of peasants" in his shot of a trunk filled with Louis Vuitton luggage. He has posted about owning several iPhones and on release day of the iPhone 5s last September, Sharma posted a picture of a gold iPhone 5s with the caption "Keep waiting in line peasants."
According to ABC News, Sharma was convicted on Aug. 18 and sentenced to 90 days at the Santa Rita Jail. He was accidentally placed in the psych ward and could not be removed because the court misplaced his case files. Two weeks later, the files were found and he was moved back to the jail.
Shalaby filed an appeal last Wednesday and has been waiting for Sharma's release, which he believes could come as soon as today.