We have spoken here many times about blows applied to Apple involving counterfeit goods, all representing losses of about $ 1 million before they were chopped.
The case we will deal with today, however, is a little bit bigger than that: Ma estimates that a recently discovered scheme cost about $ 6.1 million to their coffers in what is already considered the biggest scam of counterfeit goods in the United States.
According to the NBC San Diego, 14 people were indicted for being part of the scam, including 3 brothers (Chinese with US citizens) described as mentors of the scheme. The whole process worked in much the same way as other scams of the kind: operators imported counterfeit devices from China, such as copies of iPhones and iPads, and took them to Apple stores in the US and Canada, reporting that the devices were broken.
As Apple's policy of solving the consumer problem as quickly as possible, in most cases employees simply replace the “broken” device with a new, authentic device; the original devices were then shipped to China and other countries for sale at much higher prices. According to Apple, more than 10,000 fake gadgets were replaced by originals only in this scam.
As with other schemes of its kind, it is still unclear how scammers got original serial numbers of iPhones and iPads to apply to counterfeit goods; The most likely hypothesis is that the fraudsters would have some contact in the authentic appliance manufacturing chain in China that would pass these codes on to them.
The 14 individuals involved in the coup were charged with a number of crimes, such as fraud, identity theft, counterfeit traffic and money laundering; 11 of them are under arrest and awaiting trial, while another 3 are on the run.
via AppleInsider | image: Mykola Churpita / Shutterstock
