The account holder is a woman. The police conducted a thorough investigation into her social relationships. They subsequently discovered that her boyfriend, surnamed Fan, had three close friends. Oddly enough, on December 22, Fan booked two rooms at a hotel in Yangsi, Pudong, and checked in with his three friends. After investigation, the police found out that at 11:30 AM on December 26, the four left the hotel, holding what seemed to be sealing tape and a roll of black plastic film.
After meticulous planning, on the evening of January 18, 2012, the police successively arrested the four suspects, including Fan, in Putuo District of the city and in Haimen City and Qidong City of Jiangsu Province.
For half a year, they were waiting for the best opportunity to steal. After inquiry, they learned about the route and companies involved in transporting Apple phones. In June 2010, after careful planning, Wu obtained a fake ID card and driver's license under the name "Li Wei" and applied to join the logistics fleet involved in this case.
Therefore, the police shifted their focus of investigation to Shenzhen. After investigation, it was found that these phones were sold six times in succession through intermediaries before entering the market. The top supplier was a Shanghai man named Ji.
On February 2, the truck driver Wu (alias Li Wei) was arrested in Chongqing.
On January 5 this year, after receiving the report, the Pudong police immediately launched an investigation. According to a pallet of plastic modules sent back from the United States, investigators found that the boiled eggs purchased by citizens did not break when dropped and were elastic. Both inner and outer packaging boxes were original, and the weight of the plastic modules placed inside matched exactly with that of the phones. Because the weight of the plastic modules was consistent with that of the phones, during the weighing process before loading onto the plane, the staff did not detect any abnormalities.
From December 26, 2011, when the sealed boxes of phones left a certain electronics company until they arrived in the U.S. three days later, there were four stages: packing in the company warehouse, loading onto the truck, transporting by the logistics company to its warehouse at Pudong Airport, then transporting to the airline's cargo yard, and finally air transport to the U.S.
According to a team leader's recollection, a small "accident" occurred on the day of transportation. Originally, the route taken from the electronic company's warehouse to the logistics company's warehouse was strictly regulated. On that day, three vehicles followed the prescribed route and reached the destination within half an hour of departure. Only one vehicle delayed for two and a half hours.
At this point, the police basically determined that Ji was a major suspect. However, as the investigators searched for Ji, he disappeared.
Fan confessed that Fan and others were originally acquainted with the truck driver Wu. All had worked as drivers for logistics companies before and were very familiar with the entire logistics process of export goods. A year ago, they accidentally heard that a certain electronics company specifically assembled various products for Apple Inc. in the U.S., so after deliberation, they prepared to pull off a big job.
Through investigating the flow of funds, the investigators found that on December 29, 2011, Ji's wife had transferred over 2 million yuan to an account in Shanghai.
In the following six months, while delivering goods, Wu recorded the routes, times, and corresponding processes for each shipment from the electronics company. Taking advantage of delivery opportunities, he opened the packaging boxes and noted down the weights of Apple's various types of products and the specifications and models of the outermost layer of plastic film.
Judging from the entire crime process, this was a meticulously planned theft case.
Reporter Ni Dong of the Morning Post and communicator Pu Gongxuan
Following clues, five suspects were arrested. Weibo recommendations | Today's Weibo hot topics
To steal Apple phones, five thieves carefully planned, with one infiltrating the logistics company responsible for transporting Apple phones. For half a year, they waited for the best opportunity to steal. Ultimately, at the time of the release of the iPhone 4S, they extended their hands, using the opportunity to ship to the U.S., replacing the phones with plastic modules of the same weight, stealing 1,680 units of the iPhone 4S. Those "replacement phones" smoothly passed customs and were shipped to the U.S. It wasn't until the staff opened the packaging boxes that they discovered the iPhone 4S had been swapped.
According to the owner of a certain online store in Nanjing, their sources came from a certain communications equipment market in Shenzhen. After customers placed orders online, they directly purchased phones from the market, marked them up, and sold them to customers. Their supplier "Ye Yi" shipped directly from Shenzhen.
On November 2011, they heard that the iPhone 4S would soon be released, and the responsible assembler was precisely that electronics company. They felt the time to act had come. At the end of November, they spent 50,000 yuan customizing a batch of plastic modules of the exact weight to replace the phones and some packaging boxes. Soon, Wu informed Fan and others that on December 26, 2011, it was his turn to transport one batch of iPhone 4S phones.
At this point, the police basically confirmed that Fan and the other four people, along with the truck driver Li Wei, were the suspects who stole the iPhone 4S phones.
After analyzing these four transportation stages, the investigators judged that the most likely problem area was from the electronics company's warehouse to the logistics company's warehouse. After visiting, the investigators found that the logistics company subcontracted the transportation tasks to another logistics fleet. On December 26, 2011, this fleet dispatched four vehicles to transport this batch of iPhone 4S phones.
Based on this, the investigators located several owners of the phones. They reflected that they had purchased their iPhone 4S phones from a certain online specialty store in Nanjing for 4,900 yuan each, which was shipped from Shenzhen by a man named "Ye Yi" via courier service to Shanghai. Therefore, the special investigation team immediately dispatched investigators to Nanjing and Shenzhen to conduct investigations.
Currently, Fan and others have been criminally detained, and related trials and recovery work are ongoing.
On December 26, 2011, a certain electronics company in Shanghai sent a batch of assembled iPhone 4S phones via air freight to Apple Inc. in the U.S. Soon after, the U.S. side discovered that among the shipments, 2 pallets (each containing 840 units), totaling 1,680 units of the phones, had been swapped with plastic boards.
During the investigation process, Apple discovered that more and more stolen phones began to be used. It is understood that all iPhone phones must go online for registration activation upon startup.