Haotian Sun, a 34-year-old Chinese citizen residing in Baltimore, has been sentenced to 57 months in prison for his role in a fraudulent scheme involving Apple. The court also mandated three years of post-release supervision and ordered him to pay Apple $1,072,200 in restitution, along with a monetary penalty of $53,610.
Another individual convicted in the case, 34-year-old Pengfei Xue, also a Chinese citizen living in Germantown, Maryland, received a sentence of 54 months in prison. He was also given three years of post-release supervision and must pay Apple $397,000 in restitution, in addition to a $19,890 monetary penalty.
Court documents revealed that for two years, Sun and Xue, along with others, sent fake iPhones to Apple for repair. The company, unaware of the deception, replaced these counterfeit devices with original ones. The fraudsters obtained the counterfeit phones, which had fake IMEIs, from Hong Kong. In total, over 6,000 counterfeit phones were shipped to Apple, leading to an estimated $2.5 million in losses for the company.