You buy the latest iPhone off a guy on the street (I know, I know), and it turns out to be fake.
Let’s just assume the street-side, non-accredited ‘dealer’ isn’t what threw you off your game the most. Besides, having come in the original box, complete with the charger headphones and pamphlet, it could have been sold just about anywhere- from online to over the counter.
So what fooled you?
This did:
Besides the phone being lighter than you would expect, the exterior looks amazingly genuine.
But let’s turn it on…
If, by this point you haven’t seen it, you’re pretty much the kind of target the perpetrators are looking for.
So how did these expert con-artists manage to simulate iOS so well?
I’m no expert, but my best bet is they either recreated the body from scratch, or found a dummy and injected hardware just about powerful enough to run a fake operating system. The phone lags for days, freezes on a whim or just plain refuses to turn on.
For the more tech savvy- A look at the hardware and operating system:
This ‘pseudo hardware’, coupled with an expertly devised iOS ‘skin’ running on Android 4.2.2 is designed to fool just about anyone unfamiliar with an iPhone.
This particular fake was bought in Sandton City, for no less than R 4000, by an innocent, unsuspecting old lady who decided to buy one for her grandson thinking “that’s a bargain!”
Don’t want to get burned?
Buy your devices from trusted sources.
