Man Pleads Guilty to Trafficking Fake iPhones in Scheme That Cost Apple Nearly £711,000.

A Chinese national and former engineering student in the US state of Oregon pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods in a scheme that defrauded Apple out of roughly 1,500 iPhones. According to court records, US Customs and Border Protection opened an investigation in 2017 into a number of shipments of counterfeit iPhones that led them to Quan Jiang. Investigators said Jiang told them during an interview in December of that year that he regularly received packages from China that contained 20 to 30 inoperable iPhones, which he would then trade in for legitimate iPhones through Apple’s warranty programme by claiming they would not power on. Jiang told investigators that after trading in the fake iPhones for legitimate Apple products, either in person or online, he would ship them back to China where they were sold for hundreds of dollars. In exchange, Jiang would receive a cut of the money. Those funds were reportedly delivered to Jiang’s mother, who lives in China and would deposit the money in his account. Though Jiang used various aliases as well as the names of friends and family to carry out the scheme, Apple’s records showed that Jiang appeared to be linked to 3,069 warranty claims either with his name, mailing address, email address, or IP address, according to court documents.