Chinese students dupe Apple of nearly USD 900,000 by selling fake iPhones

Two Chinese engineering students studying in Oregon put their nerdy skills to some misuse and duped tech giant Apple of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The students, Yangyang Zhou, and Quan Jiang, ran a scam that kicked off in April 2017 and brought thousands of counterfeit iPhones into the US from Hong Kong. They then sent it to Apple complaining that they wouldn’t turn on, Cnet reported.

In return, they would get fresh, original iPhones under the company’s warranty system. The genuine devices were then sent abroad and sold for hundreds of dollars. The students earned from the profits.

The court documents reveal that 1,493 of the 3,069 warranty claims netted a replacement iPhone, and Apple estimated that it amounted to USD 895,800 as a result.

Zhou is accused of submitting false export declarations while Jiang is accused of counterfeit good trafficking and wire fraud.