Two men convicted of stealing $3 Million from Apple in iPhone scheme

Two men have been convicted of a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Apple out of 5,000 iPhones, announced the US Attorney’s office.

Haotian Sun and Pengfei Xue, two Chinese nationals residing in Maryland, have been found guilty of defrauding Apple. The pair concocted a scheme to get Apple to exchange genuine iPhones for counterfeit iPhones sent in for repair.

The duo was found guilty by a federal jury in the US District Court in the District of Columbia of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Duo found guilty of scamming Apple

The US Attorney’s Office revealed the scam’s specifics in a press release on February 20, 2024. According to the evidence presented by the government, Sun, Xue, and others engaged in the scheme between May 2017 and September 2019.

The pair deceived Apple by submitting counterfeit iPhones for repair to swap them for authentic replacements.

“Sun and Xue received shipments of inauthentic iPhones from Hong Kong at UPS mailboxes throughout the D.C. Metropolitan area.

“They then submitted the fake iPhones, with spoofed serial numbers and/or IMEI numbers, to Apple retail stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers, including the Apple Store in Georgetown,” explained the US Attorney’s Office.

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Evidence presented at trial showed that the conspirators submitted over 5,000 counterfeit phones to Apple during the scheme, aiming to cause a loss of more than $3 million to the Cupertino company. They went by fake names throughout the scheme but got arrested on December 5, 2019.

Court documents didn’t reveal what the duo did with the real iPhones after receiving them from the stores. Sentencing is set for June 21, 2024.