Beijing Police has managed to bust a factory that produced more than 41,000 counterfeit units of iPhones worth as much as 120 million yuan ($19 million). The units also include some that managed to make their way into the United States.
Beijing Police arrested 9 people involved in the counterfeiting operation, including a couple heading these operations. The factory was using a gadget maintenance shop as its cover in the northern outskirts of Beijing and was raided back in May, but it is only now when the police decided to disclose the details of the raid through its social media account.
The factory was reportedly headed by a 43 years old man and his 40 years old wife and both of them belong to the southern hardware manufacturing city of Shenzhen. They reportedly had set up the factory back in January with six assembly lines.
They apparently hired “hundreds” of workers to repackage the second-hand components in an iPhone counterfeit smartphone for export. The Beijing police was tipped about fake iPhone units arriving from Beijing by the U.S authorities who had seized some of these fake iPhone units as well.
During the raid back in May, the police had confiscated 1,400 units of counterfeit smartphones and accessories in large quantities. It’s worth noting that an iPhone, in the United States, can be sold for $649 or more, depending on the device model.
The ever rising popularity of Apple’s iPhone devices around the globe and even in China itself has led to a huge rise of fake iPhones being manufactured. In an effort to dispel the country’s image of making counterfeit goods, Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to shut down factories manufacturing devices.
[Via Reuters]