Fake iPhone sales are becoming a common sight on the streets of New York

Fake iPhone sales are becoming a common sight on the streets of New York
Fake iPhones are starting to become a common sight on the streets of New York as criminals look to cash in on the huge demand for the latest Apple device.

Fake iPhones are starting to become a common sight on the streets of New York as criminals look to cash in on the huge demand for the latest Apple device. The problem however is that the iPhones being sold by illegal vendors are probably fake. The latest discovery took place on Ninth Avenue at 39^th Street a few weeks back where an NYPD officer approached a vendor who was trying to sell a brand new boxed iPhone 4 for just $150; of course it was a fake.

The iPhone in question looked like a fake with a much inferior build quality, smaller screen and ill fitting buttons. Remarkably the fake iPhone did turn on and run apps. The apps of course were not iOS apps but some horrible copy with blurry screens; certainly not retina quality that’s for sure! NYPD later discovered that the illegal vendor also worked out of a store and promptly acquired a warrant to search the premises.

Officers raided the store on Feb. 9 and found what the police described as among the larger inventories of fake Apple electronics for sale on the East Coast. They said there were 436 iPhones, 21 iPads, 128 iPods — all fake. An official from Apple showed up to verify as much. “If you walked in and said, ‘I want a 32-gigabyte white iPhone,’ they had it,” Sergeant O’Connell said. “The iPad was the size of a Kindle screen.” Some devices turned on, while others appeared to need to be plugged in first. The police said they also found $2,400 in cash, a bunch of security cameras and two people working, Cindy Liu, 25, and Mo Ling, 36, who were arrested.

The fakes are all believed to come from China with some even being assembled from parts stolen from official Apple assembly lines. One thing is for sure, these are not iPhones and not manufactured by Apple. Of course some people actually like the fake devices and are well aware of what they are getting into. For others, it could be a nasty surprise when they open the box expecting a genuine iPhone despite the low cost!

Source: The New York Times

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