Maryland Duo Sentenced for $2.5 Million Apple iPhone Fraud

Haotian Sun and Pengfei Xue sentenced to over four years each for defrauding Apple with counterfeit iPhones.

The scheme involved submitting over 6,000 fake iPhones to Apple for genuine replacements, causing a loss of more than $2.5 million.
Sun and Xue, both Chinese nationals, used spoofed serial and IMEI numbers to disguise the fake iPhones as legitimate.
The fraudulent activity spanned from May 2017 to September 2019, with counterfeit phones shipped from Hong Kong.
Both men were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and mail fraud, with Sun receiving a 57-month sentence and Xue a 54-month sentence.
The court ordered Sun to pay $1,072,000 and Xue $397,800 in restitution to Apple, alongside three years of supervised release post-prison.