What happened

Residents of the American state of Maryland sent thousands of fake iPhones to Apple for repair. By law, the manufacturer must offer other devices for temporary use instead. That’s what the company did; sent real iPhones worth three million dollars to scammers.

Haotian Sun, 33, of Baltimore, and Penfei Xue, 33, of Germantown, Maryland, received counterfeit iPhones from Hong Kong starting in 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. For the next two years they approximately 5,000 phones were gradually supplied They even spoof serial numbers against Apple and authorized service providers to make it harder to detect their fraud.

Sun and Xue are Chinese citizens. It is not reported how long they lived in the United States. The men have already been convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraudBecause they use the mail to carry out their nonsense.

In addition to fake serial numbers, criminals also used various aliases to cover their tracks. The total amount of the fraud was approximately $3 million, according to state prosecutors.

No punishment has been given so far. A U.S. District Court judge reportedly set the sentence for June 21. Previously, two brothers named Zhiming and Zhiting Liao from San Diego were sentenced to prison last year. 41 months in prison same for iPhone and iPad replacement plan. Original Apple products were later sold to people in other countries. In this new case, the prison sentence can be up to 20 years.