Chinese Students Allegedly Swindled Apple for $1 million in iPhone Replacements

Two Chinese students in Oregon were allegedly held responsible for scamming Apple for as much as $1 million in iPhone replacements, the students are now facing criminal charges in the federal court.

According to the authorities, the students misused Apple’s return policy and hoodwinked Apple by replacing iPhone with replica devices.

The two Chinese students earlier in 2017 imported thousands of fake iPhone into the United States from China and then sent them to Apple for either repair or replacement. The two men claimed that iPhones are not powering up hence needs replacement; Apple did replace the counterfeit devices with the real iPhones costing the company around $895,800.

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The two Chinese students named Yangyang Zhou and Quan Jiang studying engineering at Oregon State University and Linn Benton Community College respectively, were also involved in other illegal activities including illegally trafficking fake goods, illegally exporting goods and committing wire fraud, according to the federal complaints.

According to the officials, Apple was unable to verify the authenticity of the devices because the iphones were unable to power on, the counterfeit devices, the outer appearance of the counterfeit devices was exactly the same as genuine Apple devices and Apple do not require proof of purchase to replace the iPhones according to the policy. Jiang submitted 3,069 requests of warranty claims and Apple allowed 1,493 replacement phones, each phone was valued at $600 brining a loss of $900,000 to Apple.