2024-02-20 22:36:12
The justice of USA declared two Chinese men guilty of a fraudulent scheme that consisted of sending Counterfeit iPhones has Apple aiming to receive original replacement devices using the coverage offered by the company.
According to a statement released todaygovernment evidence indicates that the duo operated between May 2017 and September 2019, receiving shipments of fake iPhones from Hong King (China) and sending them to both Apple retail stores and authorized service centers.
As the devices had falsified serial numbers and/or IMEI, the scammers ended up managing to deceive Apple, which had a potential loss of more than US$3 million with more than 5 mil counterfeit devices sent by the duo for repair.
To put the plan into practice, the two used several pseudonyms, but ended up being arrested in December 2019 and must serve until 20 years in prison for the crimes of conspiracy and mail fraud.
It may be curious and surprising that Apple and its employees are victims of this type of fraud — following all, the company even knows whether the internal components of its devices have come into contact with water — but the method is not new.
As scammers often claim that the device simply no longer turns on (which prevents a software check), a more superficial analysis may simply make it “miss” the warranty coverage process.
via 9to5Mac
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