In China, Scammers Are Making 'New' iPhones From Broken Handsets
by Brent Dirks
February 28, 2014
If you ever purchase an iPhone in China, you might want to be just a little more than careful. An interesting new report from The Telegraph details how a popular scam in the country makes "new" iPhones from the working parts of broken units.
After creating a handset with the working parts, workers even use polished cases the make the device look brand new:
The images, taken by an anonymous photographer and distributed through news agency CEN, show a makeshift phone factory in a small shop where several workers sit around a glass cabinet littered with hand tools and empty iPhone cases. In one photograph a worker is seen adding a new sticky cover to the screen of a freshly polished iPhone 4S. In other images there is what appears to be fake Apple packaging awaiting a handset.The business is quickly picking up steam in Shenzhen, in China’s Guangdong province. The broken handsets are smuggled into China. And the scam seems to very profitable, according to an anonymous source:
"They even know how to put codes on the iPhones again to make them indistinguishable from the brand-new models. And it costs a fraction to buy up the parts and build a second hand phone rather than buying a new one, and by selling them as new there was a lot of money to be made," they added.I can only imagine how long those “new” handsets would last. But it continues to show the iPhone’s huge popularity across the globe. For other news today, see: Target To Begin Offering An Additional $50 Off The Purchase Of A New iPhone, Apple Is Offering A $25 iTunes Gift Card With An Apple TV Purchase, and Best Buy Is Offering The iPhone 5s For $1 Through Saturday, March 1 Only.