This was a massive, sophisticated fraud that victimized not only Apple, Inc., but thousands of Apple product owners across North America. Theft of intellectual property and the sale of counterfeit goods are growing global problems with serious economic implications.
How exactly the scheme was working, you may wonder? Documents from the court shed some light on how Zhiwei Liao and his brothers, Zhimin Liao and Zhiting Liao, cooked up a scam involving over 10,000 fake iPhones and iPads.
Zhiwei Liao then shipped off the legitimately acquired Apple products to China, where they fetched a pretty penny.
While it’s not clear how they got hold of those real serial numbers, having them on the knockoff devices allowed the brothers and their crew to return the fakes to Apple. And, more often than not, Apple replaced them with genuine ones without batting an eyelid. Apparently, the devices would pass an initial examination, at least by non-technical sales staff.
