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Federal prosecutors this week accused two students of having cheated $ 900,000 on Apple by importing counterfeit iPhones and exchanging them for legitimate ones.
According to court documents, Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang are accused of having imported from China thousands of counterfeit iPhones and filed claims under the guarantee with Apple, which then replaced the imitations with real models, NPR reported Friday.
The two men, who at the time were engineering students in the United States, alleged that smartphones were out of order and would not switch on. Court documents indicate that Apple then replaced the devices with genuine, generally new, iPhones, which would then be shipped back to China and resold at a profit, reported NPR.
The duo allegedly orchestrated the ploy between April 2017 and March 2018, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed in Portland, Oregon. According to the NPR public prosecutor, prosecutors said that part of the profits had been recovered after trying to replace more than 3,000 iPhones.
Apple told investigators that it had replaced 1,493 phones with warranty claims related to Jiang and / or Zhou, and lost about $ 600 over the phone, a company official told a Homeland Security officer. The company estimates that it has lost $ 895,800.
Jiang faces trafficking in counterfeit goods and fraud charges. Zhou is accused of "communicating false or misleading information about export declarations," the point of sale said.
Jiang allegedly admitted to the authorities that an "associate" in China sent him 20 to 30 fake phones at a time and allegedly used friends – some of whom he would have paid – and pseudonyms to receive them from China. According to the complaint reported by NPR, Jiang said that he had knowingly coordinated the sending of shipments to various US addresses in order to avoid giving alarm signals to customs officers and to border protection.
According to an affidavit, Jiang and Zhou deny knowing that the iPhones shipped and submitted to Apple for repair or exchange were counterfeit or that Apple had told them that they were engaging in fraud.
Apple's attorneys, however, said the company had sent two letters in 2017 to Jiang at Zhou's address, according to documents filed by the court. NPR said that Apple's lawyer had put "on the fact that it was importing fake Apple products".
The Hill has contacted Apple for comments.
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