According to 9to5Mac, Haotian Sun and Pengfei Xue, 33, were nailed by a US jury for their cunning con, which involved flogging fake iPhones to Apple for real ones.

The crooks were part of a more prominent gang that ripped off Jobs' Mob by sending them counterfeit iPhones for repair and returning brand new ones. Sun and Xue got their phoney phones from Hong Kong and stashed them in UPS mailboxes across Washington, D.C. They then took them to Apple shops and service providers, including the one in Georgetown, and claimed they were broken.

The jury heard they pulled this stunt with over 5,000 phones, costing Apple a fortune. Sun and Xue used fake names to cover their tracks. They were nabbed on December 5, 2019. If the Tame Apple Press gets its way, they could be locked up for 20 years. They will be sentenced on June 21, 2024.

The scam was just like that run by the Liao brothers, who were jailed for 41 months for a similar scam with iPhones and iPads. They got their knock-offs from China, swapped them for the real deal, and sold them overseas for a profit.