Apple fraudster sentenced to 26 months in prison

A Washington DC court has sentenced a Chinese national to 26 months in prison after he scammed Apple for $1m of iPhones.

Haiteng Wu, 32, was convicted of a conspiracy to defraud that lasted roughly three and a half years.

It all started when Wu, his wife (Jiahong Cai) and a friend (Teang Liu) smuggled counterfeit iPhones into the US. As part of the deception, those phones contained spoofed IMEI numbers and serial numbers corresponding to genuine iPhones which were still under warranty.

The conspirators then went to Apple stores and complained that the handsets didn’t work, and were given replacements by staff. These were then sent on to China where they were sold for a healthy profit.

As well as the prison sentence, Wu has been ordered to pay “$987,000 in restitution and an identical amount in a forfeiture money judgment”, the US DoJ reports.

As for the other conspirators, Cai has been sentenced to time served (just over five months) following a guilty plea. Liu will be sentenced on 10 March.

In a similar case in 2019, another Chinese national was sentenced to 37 months in prison, MacRumors reports.

This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation (using DeepL) and additional reporting by David Price.