This man was jailed after exploiting £27,000 iPhone loophole in Apple repair service

We all know that iPhones are expensive, and a highly sought after product – who would buy an Android when you can buy an iPhone… but it’s been proven that iPhones aren’t just useful for the general phone type stuff, but also for making a quick buck – and not by selling your amazing new app!

Edward Hornsey is a 24-year-old from Cardiff and he managed to make £27,000 from Apple by exploiting their customer care program.

This was a easy plan to go through with, as all he had to do was buy some second hand iPhones online, send them to Apple, and await the fresh new iPhones. Apart from being clever enough to work out to not send all the phones at once, this doesn’t take too much thought!

All in all, he did this 51 times. Surely after such a long streak he’d managed to stay in the clear from the authorities, but apparently not. Hornsey even set up multiple accounts on eBay and Gumtree which he used to sell his new phones.

However, when the police entered his residence, they found damning evidence including masses of phones, which had previously been reported as lost or stolen. More proof came in rapidly after a quick look at his bank account showed that he had masses of deposits which ended up totalling over £27,000.

It’s not even like Hornsey could claim he just found the phones, because there’s proof to show that he looked up all the phones on the National Mobile Property Register, which showed that they were lost or second-hand, yet he still proceeded to send them into Apple’s customer care service to make a quick buck.

The prosecution said this in their statement:

Hornsey exploited a loophole in Apple’s replace or repair service. He made a profit and an undeclared living dealing in second hand mobile phones.

Whilst this initially sounds like a great plan, it obviously didn’t quite work out – maybe better planning and execution of this would’ve meant he wouldn’t be in prison for the next six months!