New Delhi. Haotian Sun and Pengfei Shue, two Chinese citizens living in Maryland, America, have been sentenced to four years in prison. They took advantage of Apple’s iPhone repair process and carried out a major fraud scam, in which the company suffered a loss of $2.5 million (about Rs 20 crore).
Sun and Shoe sent thousands of counterfeit iPhones to Apple’s repair system from 2017 to 2020. These counterfeit phones were so expertly made that they copied the serial and IMEI numbers of genuine iPhones, making the devices appear genuine to Apple employees. When Apple was unable to repair these fake iPhones, they used to replace them with genuine iPhones.
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How was the scam discovered?
The fraud was exposed when an Apple brand integrity investigator identified the unique numbers of the counterfeit devices. These numbers referred to actual iPhones that were under warranty. After this, Apple tested the fake phones recovered during the investigation, in which their components proved to be fake.
international contact
These fake iPhones were brought to America from Hong Kong, and were sent to mailboxes in Maryland via DHL and UPS. These phones were returned to Apple, so that they could be replaced with genuine iPhones.
loss caused by fraud
Not only Apple, other companies are also getting affected by this type of fraud. According to a National Retail Foundation report, retail companies in the US could lose $101 billion due to “return fraud” in 2023. Haotian Sun and Pengfei Shue were both found guilty by a US court and sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison.
Tags: Apple Latest Phone, business news
FIRST PUBLISHED: October 9, 2024, 21:57 IST