Chinese police have raided a counterfeit AirPods factory which was found to be operating on a massive scale. The fraudsters were running three production lines in an operation worth around $23.5M.
The report says police seized more than 114,000 fakes, together with manufacturing tools, spare parts, and packaging …
GizmoChina reports.
The Police authorities in Suining, Sichuan Province of China have made a huge discovery of a fake Apple Bluetooth headphone syndicate. The police recovered a huge collection of counterfeit Apple Airpods estimated at millions of US Dollars. The police destroyed nine counterfeit dens, three production lines, and six sales dens with the amount involved estimated to be about 167 million yuan (around $23.5 million).
The report indicates that more than 69,000 fake Apple Bluetooth headsets, 45,000+ semi-finished headsets, four sets of counterfeiting tools, and more than 50,000 sets of packaging materials, as well as 10,000+ sets of spare parts, were seized in the major bust.
Investigations revealed that the fake products had been very widely distributed and sold across China, though it’s unclear whether any of them made it to the US.
Counterfeit Apple products are a huge problem worldwide, with AirPods a popular target for criminal gangs as they are both small and valuable.
A report back in 2021 suggested that the total cost to Apple exceeded three billion dollars.
Fake AirPods cost Apple around $3.2 billion, estimates a report today, after US Customs and Border Protection revealed data on seizures in the past nine months.
It says that seizures of counterfeit headphones increased from $3.3 million worth in 2019 to $62.2 million worth between October last year and today – and that these are only a fraction of the total made.
Apple introduced alerts for counterfeit AirPods back in 2022, and has a dedicated team dealing with sales of fakes through Instagram.
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