[ad_1]
Two Chinese attending the University of Oregon would have used thousands of counterfeit iPhones to rip off a company that probably should have known better: Apple.
According to the so-called ploy, a collaborator in China would routinely send packets of 20 to 30 fake iPhones to Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang, who were in the US with student visas. The duo would then send these imitations with repair requests to Apple. If the company determined that a dummy device was eligible under warranty, it would repair it or, more often than not, replace it with an authentic model – usually a new phone – that the students would then send to China for resale for profit. .
The scam has been reported for the first time by the Oregonian and it is described in detail in a criminal complaint filed last month by federal prosecutors.
Federal agents were informed of the scheme in April 2017 when they opened five suspicious packages from Hong Kong containing phones possibly marked with counterfeit notes.
In their exchanges with Apple, the two men used their own contact details as well as the addresses of friends in neighboring states, claiming that the phones would not turn on. Jiang's name is associated with 3,069 claims, according to prosecutors. Apple estimates that it has completed 1,493, a loss of $ 895,800. He rejected others, as he normally does for counterfeit or tampered devices, said a spokeswoman at the Oregonian.
Federal prosecutors accused Jiang of trafficking in counterfeit and wire fraud products; Zhou is accused of providing false information on export documents. Zhou and Jiang say in court documents that they did not know that iPhones were fake.
In recent years, counterfeit iPhones are becoming more and more like reality. Apparently, the counterfeits are so good that they fool Apple technicians themselves.
Apple is not alone. In the United States, fraudsters have cheated companies of an estimated $ 17 billion in 2017, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. Many of them enjoy generous guarantees and corporate return policies. Amazon in particular has been at the center of many of these creative projects. Over the years, Apple has slowly tweaked its repair policy to thwart fraudsters. Although some states have regulations prohibiting organized theft in retail, there is no federal law to combat this phenomenon. While companies try to make their return policies harmless, it is possible that regular consumers (paywall) suffer the consequences.
[ad_2]
Source link