Men in Maryland convicted of multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Apple

Gabby Allen
·1 min read
2

WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — Two Chinese nationals were convicted on Tuesday of a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Apple Inc. out of more than 5,000 iPhones.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), from May 2017 to September 2019, Haotian Sun, 33, of Baltimore, Md., and Pengfei Xue, 33, of Germantown, Md., submitted counterfeit iPhones to Apple for repair in exchange for replacement phones. The DOJ said that Sun also went by the names Hao Sun, Jack Sun and Frank Sun.

They would receive shipments of the fake phones from Hong Kong at UPS mailboxes throughout the D.C. area. Then, they submitted the fake iPhones to Apple retail stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers.

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The DOJ said Sun opened eight UPS Store mailboxes using his Maryland driver’s license and university ID card in 2017.

U.S. postal inspectors arrested Sun and Xue in December 2019. In total, their scheme intended to cause a loss of more than $3 million to Apple, according to the DOJ.

A federal jury convicted the two of mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. They are scheduled to be sentenced on June 21 and each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

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