In England, a customer orders an iPhone 15 Pro, but receives a pretty convincing copy of the Android-based iPhone in the mail.
For Ed from Surrey, England, known by the Reddit handle theEdmard, he claims he ordered an iPhone 15 Pro directly from Apple’s website, with legitimate tracking along the way and confirmation emails from Apple and the delivery service.
An almost perfect imitation
But when the package arrived, something was wrong. In fact, the phone looked like the one Ed had ordered – a natural titanium iPhone 15 Pro with 256GB of RAM – and the packaging looked authentic. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that the device was actually an Android phone equipped with software that mimicked Apple’s iOS user interface.
Many details caught the eye: the phone was equipped with a screen protector (Apple iPhones never come with a protective film), unusual edges of the case and several applications, including Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, were pre-installed on the phone. Which, again, is something Apple never does.
Ed, chief operating officer of cloud software provider AtWrk, said he reached out to Apple to find out what was going on but had not yet received a response.
Reddit theEdmard via Mashable
The buyer states that he is confident that he ordered directly from Apple because his order number matches the number stored by Apple in the database. He showed Mashable.com the order confirmation page he received via email, which appears authentic, and said Apple has been “very responsive” so far, although the issue has not yet been resolved.
Possible data theft
Ed may not be the only person who has fallen victim to this scam. A recent buyer described a very similar problem on TikTok: He received a counterfeit Android device in the mail instead of a legitimately ordered Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Apple ships millions of iPhones every month and cases like these are rare, especially if you order directly from Apple. However, this scam is dangerous because the Android copy of the iPhone is a pretty convincing work device that asks the user to log in with their credentials, which can lead to data theft.
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The latest news is that Apple has contacted this unfortunate customer to announce that an iPhone 15 Pro will be sent to him.