Apple Georgetown was one of many shops focused by the rip-off
Two people who conned Apple into changing faux defective iPhones with actual ones, have been sentenced to years in jail.
Virtually 5 years after they have been arrested in December 2019, Maryland residents Haotian Solar and Pengfei Xue, have been sentenced to 57 months and 54 months jail time respectively. The sentence follows their grand jury conviction in February 2024, the place their scheme was detailed over greater than three days of testimony.
In line with Justice.gov, between Could 2017 and September 2019, the pair and different unnamed conspirators repeatedly defrauded Apple. In every of greater than 6,000 circumstances, faux iPhones could be acquired from Hong Kong, after which despatched on to numerous UPS mailboxes within the Washington D.C. metropolitan space.
The pair would then take one among these faux iPhones to Apple Shops together with the one in Georgetown, and have it’s exchanged for real ones.
The entire loss to Apple is estimated to have been greater than $2.5 million. As a part of their sentencing, Solar has been ordered to serve three years of supervised launch after the jail sentence, and pay $1,072,000 in restitution.
Co-conspirator Xue can be to serve three years of supervised launch, and is ordered to pay $397,800.
Individually, an identical rip-off in southern California netted a legal gang round $12 million value of iPhones till they have been arrested in Could 2024.