“Two engineering students in Oregon are accused of bringing thousands of counterfeit iPhones to Apple and having them replaced with real ones that they then shipped to China for sale,” William Gallagher reports for AppleInsider.
“Students Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang, both Chinese nationals studying in Oregon, are accused of getting Apple to replace their counterfeit iPhones with real ones. Each iPhone was replaced under Apple’s repair policies and the thousands of phones were then sent to China where they were sold,” Gallagher reports. “Apple reportedly estimates the cost of the fraud to be $895,800.”
“According to court records as reported by The Oregonian newspaper, Apple received more than 3,000 warranty claims from Jiang and in 1,493 cases replaced his phone,” Gallagher reports. “At the time of the alleged fraud, Zhou and Jiang were both living in Corvallis, Oregon, and were on student visas to study engineering. Jiang was studying at Linn Benton Community College and Zhou at Oregon Sciences University.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 1,493 replacement iPhones to one person? You’d think the thousandth replacement iPhone going to the same guy would have raised the red flag at Apple, wouldn’t you?
Apple Retail Stores’ ability to identify real iPhones from counterfeits on site needs some tweaking.
The West just doesn’t want to know……
“1,493 replacement iPhones to one person” is not the question.
“1,493 FAKE iPhones FROM one person” is the question.
Apple won’t repair my Mac if it has non-Apple RAM, but they can’t recognize a fake iPhone?
Its hard to believe that unless they had a slew of other people bringing in these devices, that someone would have raised a flag after the just a few from the same people. Even if they went to different stores, which in Oregon, how many could there be a couple (without looking).
If I saw the same two people over and over bringing in supposedly dead iPhones, it would get suspicious in a hurry, there just seems to be something wrong with this story…
Hmmm. Maybe the Apple geniuses were hired from the students at the university inEugene. they do like their wacky tobaccy.
“Another bad iPhone? Wow, dude, thats like the thousandth time. Such a bummer it keeps happening to you.”
Some kind of inside job involved somewhere?
It’s not always easy to get an outright replacement even when a legitimate warranty item is brought in.
Most likely had assistance inside Apple at some level.
How does a fake iPhone have a legitimate serial number?
This story demonstrates why people do not like reporters.
The nearest physical Apple retail to Eugene or Corvallis, Oregon is 100 miles in Portland!