Two Chinese language nationals face 20 years in jail after being caught and convicted of submitting over 5,000 faux iPhones value greater than $3 million to Apple with the objective of getting them changed with real units.
Apple provides a one-year guarantee for brand new iPhones, enabling clients to return malfunctioning units to Apple or licensed resellers for a alternative. Moreover, Apple gives insurance coverage safety plans, permitting clients to increase the guarantee interval past one 12 months.
The corporate gives a number of strategies to submit faulty iPhones for repairs or replacements underneath its guarantee service and handset alternative program.
Choices embody delivery the telephone to Apple by means of United Parcel Service (UPS) freed from cost, visiting an Apple retail retailer, or going to an Apple Licensed Service Supplier.
Between July 2017 and December 2019, Haotian Solar and Pengfei Xue (and their co-conspirators Wen Jin Gao and Dian Luo) took benefit of Apple’s coverage to exchange non-functioning counterfeit units.
“The item of the conspiracy was for the conspirators to unjustly enrich themselves by fraudulently acquiring genuine iPhones from Apple after submitting inauthentic iPhones to Apple for restore and alternative,” in accordance with the indictment.
Faux iPhones with spoofed IMEIs and serial numbers
All through this multi-year scheme, they shipped counterfeit units from Hong Kong to industrial mail receiving company (CMRA) mailboxes in UPS shops, opened utilizing their precise driver’s licenses and college identification playing cards.
They then submitted the inauthentic iPhones with spoofed serial numbers and IMEI numbers to Apple retail shops and Apple Licensed Service Suppliers and acquired alternative iPhones from Apple, shipped by way of personal and industrial interstate carriers, together with FedEx, DLH, and UPS.
These alternative units had been shipped to the conspirators in Hong Kong to promote and share the illegally obtained funds between the scheme’s members.
A jury convicted Solar and Xue of mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud this week. U.S. postal inspectors arrested them in December 2019.
They every face a most penalty of 20 years in jail and are scheduled to be sentenced on June 21, 2024.
