Two brothers were sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for deceiving Apple into exchanging 10,000 counterfeit iPhones and iPads for real ones. The two brothers from San Diego are Liao Zhimin and Liao Zhiting, and the third brother, Liao Zhiwei, will be sentenced later in October. Their wives were also sentenced to three years of probation, the Times of San Diego reported.

Meanwhile, eight other co-conspirators have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Although not confirmed by the publication, judging from the total list of 14 gang members, three (Xiamon Zhong, Charley Hsu and HyoWeon Yang) have been arrested because they escaped during the initial arrest operation and became fugitives.

The arrest and subsequent charges were made in 2019. According to reports, the gang's operations had lasted for eight years at this time, defrauding Apple of a total of approximately $6.1 million.

The brothers had sources in China and were able to purchase more than 10,000 counterfeit iPhones from China. They would then take the fakes to an Apple store, where they would exchange them for real Apple devices.

Court documents give few details about how they did this and how they passed device inspections at Apple stores. But the devices appear to have real serial numbers and are somehow copied from real iPhones.

The San Diego Times stated that Liao Zhimin personally visited 105 Apple stores in 22 states. Liao Zhiting went to at least 200 specialty stores in 18 states and Canada. Both men attempted to redeem approximately 720 iPhones and iPads in-store.

In addition to his 41-month prison sentence, the criminal agreed to return more than 200 iPhones to Apple, give up his San Francisco residency, and pay back more than $250,000.

The Liu brothers are naturalized U.S. citizens, as are some of their co-conspirators. Their gang included a Chinese citizen and others born in Vietnam, South Korea and Russia.

According to reports, the criminal gang was discovered through the joint efforts of the FBI, Homeland Security, San Diego Police Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies.