US court awards 20 yrs jail term to 2 guilty in $3 mn iPhone repair scheme

San Francisco: The U.S. court has found two Chinese nationals guilty of a “sophisticated scheme to defraud Apple out of millions of dollars’ worth of iPhones.”

The scam involved submitting counterfeit iPhones to Apple for repair, which were then replaced with genuine iPhones.

Haotian Sun, 33, and Pengfei Xue, 33, were found guilty by a federal jury in the US District Court of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, which carry a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The judge scheduled sentencing for June 21, 2024.