Two Chinese students from a US university are being investigated for using thousands of fake iPhones to scam Apple. According to the indictment, Quan Jiang and Yangyang Zhou, who lived in Oregon on a student visa, organized a rather simple scam: the two imported counterfeit iPhones from China, then sent them to Apple claiming they were iPhones under warranty. that no longer worked, and Apple sent them a real new iPhone in exchange. The real iPhones were then shipped back to China and sold for hundreds of dollars, of which Jiang and Zhou took a percentage. This scam is estimated to have cost Apple around $ 900,000 (€ 800,000).
The investigation began two years ago after several Hong Kong packages containing fake iPhones made in China were seized at US customs. It turned out that the iPhones were all destined for Zhou's home in Corvallis, Oregon, and that they were part of a large round of imports of counterfeit products that also involved Zhou's neighbor Jiang.
According to reports from Apple to investigators, in all Jiang would have requested the replacement of 3,069 fake iPhones, of which only 1,493 were actually replaced. Apple claims that all iPhones that are rejected for being counterfeit are usually sent back to the sender, but Jiang said he never received any products back, nor did Apple warn him that he was doing something illegal.
The replacement requests made to Apple would have been motivated by Jiang always arguing that the phones had problems with the battery and that they would not turn on anymore. According to a representative of Apple, it was precisely this that guaranteed the success of the scam: the iPhones that arrived at Apple, in fact, from the outside were in all respects the same as the real iPhones, but given that they did not turn on the he company decided to replace them even before the technicians realized they were counterfeit. Unlike the real ones, counterfeit iPhones are cheap, sometimes just a hundred dollars, but are virtually indistinguishable from the original ones. In some cases they are not only similar on the outside, but they also reproduce Apple's operating system almost perfectly, and noticing the differences is difficult even for an expert eye.
Jiang told investigators that several of his friends and family members in the United States were also contributing to the scam, and that the person reselling real iPhones in China gave part of the profit to his mother, who then deposited the money into a checking account. Jiang could also access from the United States. Federal prosecutors accused Jiang of trafficking in counterfeit goods and computer fraud, while Zhou is accused of providing false information on export documents.
