Source: Anton Novoderezhkin / Getty
Apple is big on security and making sure all of your information is safe, but two Oregon students have exposed the company has a lot of work to do when it comes to its return policy scamming the tech giant out of nearly a million dollars.
Two foreign students Quan Jiang and Yangyangg Zhou here on visas reportedly received shipments of counterfeit iPhones from China. The bootleg smartphones which easily passed for the real versions of the phone were then returned to Apple and exchanged for working replacements.
The scam surprisingly worked with Jian and Zhou according to reports sending Apple 2,000 fake phones claiming they were defective models. The company didn’t exchange all of the counterfeit phones but did replace over 1,400 of the iPhones. Apple reportedly lost up to $900,000 due to them falling for the jig. It took a while, but Apple and customs eventually caught on.
The two students were making off like fat cats because the knockoffs only cost around $30. When Zhou’s house was raided, authorities found over 300 bootleg iPhones. Now both men are facing a range of charges including wire fraud, trafficking knockoff goods, and false customs declarations. Zhou’s attorney’s claims his client had no knowledge of the scam and that Jiang was the “mastermind” behind the whole thing despite evidence being found in his residence.
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Photo: Anton Novoderezhkin / Getty
