Two Chinese Nationals Convicted for Multimillion-Dollar Scheme to Defraud Apple Out of 5,000 iPhones

A federal jury in Washington, D.C. convicted two Chinese nationals Tuesday for participating in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Apple Inc. out of 5,000 iPhones.

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Haotian Sun (aka Hao Sun, Jack Sun, and Frank Sun), 33, of Baltimore, Maryland, and Pengfei Xue, 33, of Germantown, Maryland were convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

According to court documents, Sun and Xue, along with other co-conspirators, submitted counterfeit iPhones with spoofed serial numbers to Apple for repair, aiming to get Apple retail stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers to exchange the fake phones with genuine replacements.

Prosecutors alleged the scheme was intended to cause a loss to Apple of more than $3 million.

The fraudulent iPhones were sent to Sun and Xue at UPS mailboxes throughout the D.C. Metropolitan area from Hong Kong.

In 2017, Sun opened eight UPS Store mailboxes using his Maryland driver’s license and university identification card.

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The two Chinese nationals were arrested by U.S. postal inspectors in December 2019.

Sun and Xue are scheduled to be sentenced on June 21, and each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.