24 hours ago, we launched our manhunt to find one of the 200 customers who bought an iPhone 4 for £99 from Groupola. Up until that point, we’d sifted through Groupola’s own Facebook page (with nearly 3,000 members) and all the blogs that have commented on the story. Groupola themselves claimed “a number of winners” were talking to the media, but we could only find one who did – Dean O’Brien.  In all, we found just four individuals claiming to have bought the handset at Groupola’s bargain price.

What’s new? So far, only one person has come forward to comment to Bitterwallet – the same individual put forward by Groupola’s PR agency to other blogs and news outlets, and so one of the four names already on our list; Dean O’Brien.

We’ve had a good chat with Dean, and we’ve no doubt he’s a genuine customer who bought the £99 iPhone 4. He was contacted by Groupola shortly after the company was criticised by frustrated customers, and asked whether he’d be prepared to comment to the media. He found Bitterwallet because he’s being keeping a close eye on the story through Google News – he says he’s acutely aware that he’s the only customer so far to speak to the media.

The other the names on our list – Laura ‘Bungle’ Borro, Rick ‘Rikity’ Mackenzie and Luke Nevill-Bond – all posted on Groupola’s Facebook page to say they’d bought one of the special price handsets.

Luke posted a full screenshot of the confirmation page to Facebook, to prove to the dozens of frustrated customers that he’d bought an iPhone 4:

At first glance, a couple of details don’t quite make sense about Luke’s screenshot (click here to see the full size version); the clock on it reads 11:16, a full 20 minutes after Groupola announced all stock had been sold. Luke also appears to have completed an unsecured transaction:

It’s a little odd for even a purchase confirmation to be unsecured, so a couple of Groupola customers have made purchases for us and took screenshots of the URL bars from their confirmation pages:

Two different browsers were used, and in both instances the transaction was completed securely (https). It’s possible that Luke didn’t take the screenshot until 20 minutes after his purchase, and maybe the browser’s implementation of SSL was broken, or a fault meant that all transactions were unsecure on the morning in question. Hopefully Luke can follow Dean’s example and get in touch with Bitterwallet.