Police in Beijing have shut down a factory that produced over 41,000 counterfeit iPhones, worth about $19 million USD, reports Reuters. Nine suspects have been arrested in the operation.
Police arrested nine people, including a married couple who led the operation, after a raid in May on the factory, run under the guise of a gadget maintenance shop on the northern outskirts of the Chinese capital. The details were revealed in a social media posting on Sunday by the public security bureau in Beijing.
The group was lead by a 43-year-old man, surnamed Yu and his 40-year-old wife, surnamed Xie. Both were from the manufacturing city of Shenzhen. They allegedly set up the Beijing factory with six assembly lines in January and then hired hundreds of workers to repackage second-hand smartphone components as iPhones.
In the raid which took place on May 14, police seized 1,400 handsets and a large quantity of accessories. The investigation was started following a tip from U.S. authorities who had seized some of the fake iPhones.
It's unclear how many counterfeit iPhones made it to the United States undetected.
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Police arrested nine people, including a married couple who led the operation, after a raid in May on the factory, run under the guise of a gadget maintenance shop on the northern outskirts of the Chinese capital. The details were revealed in a social media posting on Sunday by the public security bureau in Beijing.
The group was lead by a 43-year-old man, surnamed Yu and his 40-year-old wife, surnamed Xie. Both were from the manufacturing city of Shenzhen. They allegedly set up the Beijing factory with six assembly lines in January and then hired hundreds of workers to repackage second-hand smartphone components as iPhones.
In the raid which took place on May 14, police seized 1,400 handsets and a large quantity of accessories. The investigation was started following a tip from U.S. authorities who had seized some of the fake iPhones.
It's unclear how many counterfeit iPhones made it to the United States undetected.
Read More