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A Chinese national living in the US has been sentenced to 37 months in prison for taking part in a scheme to import counterfeit Apple products, the Department of Justice has announced. The products, which included fake iPhones and iPads, were smuggled from China into the US. After serving time, Jianhua "Jeff" Li, 44, will also get one year of supervised release, the DOJ said Tuesday.
More than 40,000 electronic devices and accessories, as well as fake labels and packaging with Apple trademarks, were trafficked and smuggled into the US between July 2009 and February 2014.
The fake labels and phony Apple products were shipped separately to avoid detection by customs, the DOJ said.
"The devices were then shipped to conspirators all over the United States," the Justice Department said. "Proceeds were funneled back to conspirator accounts in Florida and New Jersey via structured cash deposits and then a portion was transferred to conspirators in Italy, further disguising the source of the funds.
More than $1.1 million in sales proceeds were wired from US accounts into accounts that Li controlled overseas, the agency said.
https://www.cnet.com/news/counterfeit-apple-products-land-chinese-national-3-year-prison-sentence/
Also at:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-over-three-years-prison-trafficking-counterfeit-apple-goods-united
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/fake-apple-chinese-national-3-years-smuggling-counterfeit-goods
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 31 2019, @10:05PM
Not that you're wrong or anything, but I assumed he was selling cheap Android phones with Apple logos on them, and calling them iPhones.
That was a thing when iPhones first came out.
A friend of mine bought one back from China. It looked quite a lot like an iPhone (version 3 maybe?) if you squinted, but ran some awful feature phone OS that did not really work properly.
He was well aware of what he was buying, but as it cost something like $40 it was a sort of curiosity rather than a ripoff.