In order to steal Apple iPhones, five thieves meticulously planned the operation. One of them infiltrated a logistics company specifically responsible for transporting Apple iPhones and stayed undercover for half a year. Eventually, when the iPhone 4s was launched, they took advantage of the opportunity to ship goods to the U.S., substituting identical-weight plastic modules for 1,680 iPhone 4s units.
After succeeding in their plan, the five thieves split the money and fled separately. Recently, after more than ten days of careful investigation, the police successfully apprehended the five suspects.
Apple USA claimed that the phones had been substituted
On December 26, 2011, Shanghai Electronics Co., Ltd. shipped a batch of assembled iPhone 4s units by air freight to Apple Inc. in the U.S. Soon after, Apple discovered that a total of 1,680 phones had been swapped out with plastic modules.
On January 5th this year, upon receiving the report, the Pudong police immediately launched an investigation. Based on the plastic modules sent back from the U.S., investigators found that both the inner and outer packaging boxes were original, and the weight of the substituted plastic modules matched perfectly with the weight of the phones. Because the weights were consistent, during the weighing process before loading onto the plane, the staff did not detect any abnormalities.
The problem might have occurred during transportation
From December 26, 2011, starting when the sealed boxes of phones left a certain electronics company, until three days later when they arrived in the U.S., the entire process included four stages: packing in the company warehouse, loading onto a truck, transportation by the logistics company to its warehouse at Pudong Airport, then transporting to the airline's cargo yard, and finally shipping via air transport to the U.S.
After analyzing these four transportation stages, investigators determined that the most likely problematic stage was from the electronics company's warehouse to the logistics company's warehouse. After visiting, investigators found that the logistics company subcontracted the transportation task to another logistics fleet. On December 26, 2011, this fleet dispatched four trucks to transport the batch of iPhone 4s units.
According to the recollection of a fleet captain, a small "incident" occurred on the day of transportation. Originally, there were specified routes for transporting from the electronics company's warehouse to the logistics company's warehouse. That day, three vehicles followed the specified route and reached the destination within half an hour of departure. Only one vehicle was delayed by two and a half hours due to a "blowout."
Stolen phones appeared in a Nanjing online store
During the investigation, Apple discovered that an increasing number of stolen phones were being used. Based on this, investigators located several phone owners. They reported that the iPhone 4s units they used were purchased for 4,900 yuan each from a certain online specialty store in Nanjing, and were shipped from Shenzhen to Shanghai by a man named "Ye Yi."
Further investigation revealed that these phones were sold through six separate transactions and eventually flowed into the market. The top-level seller was a Shanghai native named Ji Mou. Coincidentally, Ji Mou arrived in Shanghai by plane three days after the incident on December 28, 2011. The next day, he sent a large shipment from Shanghai to Shenzhen, after which iPhone 4s units began appearing in the Shenzhen market.
Through investigating the flow of funds, investigators found that on December 29, 2011, Ji Mou’s wife transferred over 2 million yuan to a Shanghai account. The account holder was a woman. Her boyfriend, Fan Mou, had three close friends. Strangely, on December 22, Fan Mou booked two rooms at a hotel in Yangsi, Pudong, and checked in simultaneously with his three friends.
Upon investigation, the police basically confirmed that Fan Mou and his three friends, along with the truck driver Li Wei, were the suspects in the theft of the iPhone 4s units. On the evening of January 18, 2012, the police successively arrested four suspects including Fan Mou in Putuo District, Shanghai, Haimen City, Jiangsu Province, and Qidong City. On February 2nd, the logistics company truck driver Wu Mou (alias Li Wei) was captured in Chongqing.
Suspects admitted to planning the major heist after infiltrating for half a year
Fan Mou confessed that Fan Mou and others were originally acquainted with the truck driver Wu Mou. All of them had previously worked as drivers for logistics companies and were very familiar with the entire logistics process for export goods. After making inquiries, they learned about the routes and involved companies for transporting Apple phones from a certain company in Shanghai. Thus, in June 2010, after careful planning, Wu Mou obtained a fake ID card and driver's license under the name "Li Wei" and applied to join the logistics fleet involved in the case. In November 2011, they heard that the iPhone 4s would soon be launched and that it would be assembled by the aforementioned electronics company. They felt the time to act had come. By the end of November, they spent 50,000 yuan customizing a batch of plastic modules with the exact same weight as the phones, as well as some packaging boxes.
At 1:25 PM on December 26, Fan Mou and his four accomplices, along with Wu Mou, substituted and stole 1,680 phones. On December 28, Fan Mou and others sold the phones to Ji Mou at a price of 1,400 yuan per unit, after which they fled separately.
Currently, Fan Mou and others have been criminally detained, and related investigations and asset recovery efforts are still ongoing. (According to News Morning Post)
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