iPhones are the most popular smartphones on the market and this is a fact that no one can deny in any way, but popularity also attracts very big problems. In this idea, extremely many criminals have made millions of dollars from the sale of stolen terminals or fraud, and today we have the story of some of them.
Today's story is based in the USA and begins in a FedEx courier location, where an overturned and partially opened package reveals dozens of iPhone boxes. Courier employees announce the company Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, which in turn announces a division of the Department of Justice called eCrime Unit, it being specialized in computer crimes.
Wen and Tan took advantage of the system by obtaining iPhones—through middlemen and mules—for $200 a pop, then selling them in China for close to $1,000. By the time the whole operation was brought down in March of 2013, he and his wife had become very wealthy, to the tune of close to $2.5 million in annual income.
Following the package picked up by an intermediary and delivered to a Chinese naturalized in the USA, the division of the justice department discovers a business of millions of dollars. At its base are mainly the terminals iPhone, but of course other Android smartphones or even Blackberry are part of it, depending on their popularity.
iPhone - a business of millions of dollars through theft and fraud
According to the investigation of the eCrime unit, the Chinese citizen and his wife set up a business that focused on mobile phone operators and subsidies for smartphones or tablets. He paid street people to sign mobile phone subscriptions and buy terminals at prices up to $200, which he then sent for sale in China.
Based on this arrangement, the Chinese buys a terminal for $200 from the operators and sells it for $1000 in China after sending it to local contacts, the difference representing his profit. Based on such a scheme to defraud mobile phone operators, whose subscriptions were no longer paid by street people, the Chinese accumulated a fortune of 2.5 million dollars in just a few years.
Basically, defrauding mobile phone operators generated a lot of money for chienz and just as much for his associates, the whole operation being closed in 2013. Additional details about his way of working, but also other information regarding similar problems in the USA you will find in the original article published by Wired.
