Two Maryland residents who defrauded Apple of thousands of iPhones worth millions of dollars were convicted of mail fraud on February 20, 2024. In this respect reports MacRumor’s publication.
The culprits were revealed to be Chinese citizens Haotian Sun and Pengfei Xue. They developed a fraud scheme in which they exploited a vulnerability in the mechanism for returning defective iPhones by mail. They sent fake iPhones to Apple pretending to be original but not working, and in return received original devices that were much more expensive than the fake iPhones.
Between May 2017 and September 2019, Sun and Xue regularly received fake iPhones from Hong Kong, and each was then assigned serial numbers and IMEIs from the original devices. Later, the blanks were replaced by full-fledged smartphones from Apple. Fraudsters stole more than 5,000 iPhones worth about $3 million from Apple this way over more than two years.
Sun and Xue were convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy. They face up to 20 years in prison. The decision will be announced on June 21, 2024.
Russians before saidHow to identify a fake document on the Internet.