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Man Who Tricked Apple into Replacing 1,500 Fake iPhones Pleads Guilty to Trafficking Counterfeit Goods
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When I have a problem with an iPhone and have trouble booking an appointment, then talking to the "genius" who seems to delight in explaining what I already know only to have them reluctantly give me what I'm probably entitled to under local consumer law, and then see this guy do it 1500 times I'm impressed.
Man, the questiin is how this guy vould cheat apple, forget fake name and fake address, you you think is the only thing apple checkS??!!!!
TheSIM card tray should have a serial number and IMEI. One would think they would check that for warranty status before issuing a replacement or look more closely if the tray is absent.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204073
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reassemble an iPhone and then generate a fake IMEI can be done within 2 hours..... in Shenzhen, a copycat city
i am happy that this guy will enjoy the jail soon, hopefully 20 years.....
thanks to these ****ing guys, Apple's new after-sales service makes us, in China, very complicated to replace / repair a really damaged iPhone or iPad. SHAME on them!! ------ btw. i am a Shanghainese.
thanks to these ****ing guys, Apple's new after-sales service makes us, in China, very complicated to replace / repair a really damaged iPhone or iPad. SHAME on them!! ------ btw. i am a Shanghainese.
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This also struck me as very, very odd. It's literally the first thing we used to do at the bar is pull the SIM tray and use that serial to pull up the AppleCare. Serials are random, they mean something and they're validated on the back end. Invalid serials don't get AppleCare. If the SIM tray isn't there, you can't service if it won't turn on.
Unless the systems VASTLY changed since I worked there, A LOT of employees screwed up A LOT.
A Chinese man on Wednesday pleaded guilty in Oregon to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods, after he managed to trick Apple into replacing hundreds of fake iPhones with authentic handsets through its warranty program (via Bloomberg).
Quan Jiang, 30, a former engineering student at a community college in Albany, Oregon, sent around 3,000 counterfeit devices to Apple, via one of the state's three Apple stores or online. Jiang used fake names and claimed the iPhones wouldn't turn on and should be replaced under warranty.
This seems a bit racist. He’s a student in the USA ... is he born in China or just calling out his heritage as if that has any real relevance on his actions or the charge or him pleading guilty? Is he an exchange student or a visa etc or a full out United States citizen?
Just pointing this out considering just how insane the current trade war will have serious focus on such articles. Ijustdont think it’s necessary. CinemaSins would definitely say “yuh that’s racist”.
No, just the outer shell. Take a look at some YouTube videos--there are some convincing fakes out there. Many of them even turn on and actually function. They're usually loaded with a version of Android and the launcher is a copy of the IOS interface. They even have a rudimentary version of FaceID that actually works too. Some very dumb people may not even know they received a fake if they've never owned an iPhone.
While that is possible. Isn't that just to trick carriers into allowing activation? How would that show up in Apple's database? How would that reconcile with the serial number in Apple's database? I'm just curious. As it seems like there should be an immediate red flag when they type in the numbers on the SIM card tray or a missing SIM card tray. Unless this operation is more sophisticated or Apple is a bit more lax than I would suppose.
The phones didn't turn on. Serial numbers etc. are all electronic, you can't get them if you can't turn on the phone.
As I've listed in another response. The SIM card tray should have the IMEI printed on it. Looking at Apple's support article again. It is only the IMEI on current iPhones. Older models had both the IMEI and Serial on the tray. Newer just have the IMEI.
The original article in Bloomberg had "Chinese national" which is a normal way to identify someone and not racist. It's no different, IMHO, when someone is identified as Canadian, German, etc. The news is simply stating a fact as part of their reporting.
MR changed national to man instead of leaving it as Bloomberg did.
Ok, but their policy in this case was to trust the customer the first 1500 times!
He didn't trick anyone, Apple store managers routinely instruct their employees to look the other way when confronted by fraud.
His status as a Chinese national (which means he's here on a student visa) is material to his acquisition of the fraudulent phones, and his reselling of them back into the Chinese market.
Real punishment would be revoking his right to stay in the US. Ban him from the country.
very good question!!! the same to me, I am also very curious about what kind of hardware / software they are using to generate [or we can say "rewrite"] the IMEI and then activate it via the Apple Database Verifying. But it is a fact happening in Shenzhen. I read a long text about the illegal industry of the "Black market". the iPhone market in Shenzhen is beyond my imagination.
I wonder if I ran into this guy some years back...
Before all these repair shops that replace screens, batteries, etc. popped up (or became as popular) I had an iPhone 4 (S?) with cracked glass. Found a guy on Craigslist who advertised a really good price to replace it and claimed to use Apple parts. We met up and he proceeded to open up a brand new iPhone remove the screen and swapped it with mine.
I thought it really odd at the time (how could that be cost effective?!?) and best I could figure he was using a single “donor” phone to replace screens, batteries, back glass, even main boards on multiple different phones. And I assumed he would then take the frankenstein phone into an Apple store for replacement under AppleCare+ warranty and then start the whole thing over again.
Maybe that method is commonly used (?) but it was foreign to me and that experience immediately came to mind when I read this article since I’m in the Portland area. Perhaps the guy evolved his schemes over the years.
Before all these repair shops that replace screens, batteries, etc. popped up (or became as popular) I had an iPhone 4 (S?) with cracked glass. Found a guy on Craigslist who advertised a really good price to replace it and claimed to use Apple parts. We met up and he proceeded to open up a brand new iPhone remove the screen and swapped it with mine.
I thought it really odd at the time (how could that be cost effective?!?) and best I could figure he was using a single “donor” phone to replace screens, batteries, back glass, even main boards on multiple different phones. And I assumed he would then take the frankenstein phone into an Apple store for replacement under AppleCare+ warranty and then start the whole thing over again.
Maybe that method is commonly used (?) but it was foreign to me and that experience immediately came to mind when I read this article since I’m in the Portland area. Perhaps the guy evolved his schemes over the years.