Cheap iPhone Trap: The Old Trick Still Works

The seemingly "old as the hills" scam continues to lure gullible people who are greedy for cheap, high-quality goods.

“Selling genuine iPhones at cheap prices” is a scam that has been warned since 2012, but many people still fall for it. Specifically, the tricks of these scammers are to pretend to be lottery ticket sellers, poor workers who find genuine iPhones but don’t know how to use them and want to sell them, or people who have fallen on hard times and want to have money to go home.

I met Ms. PTH, a vendor at Tan My market (District 7, Ho Chi Minh City) during a trial at District 4 Court. While waiting for the court to deliberate, seeing that she had many phones, a relative asked for one to use. Without saying a word, she immediately took out her iPhone 6 Plus and gave it to me. Seeing many people's surprised eyes, she said: "Ah, it's a Chinese phone. It's nothing but comfortable to make and receive calls."

It turned out that at the end of March, Ms. Huong was drinking water near her house when an old woman selling lottery tickets stopped by to chat.

“After a few sentences, the old lady was trembling, holding a stack of lottery tickets in her hand, sneaking over to me, showing me the phone hidden in her pocket, saying she had just found it. It was an iPhone 6. She said she didn’t know how to use it, so she wanted to sell it for 4.5 million VND. When I picked it up to look at it, the phone rang, the old lady hurriedly asked me to turn it off because someone was calling back to claim the phone, and then said if I didn’t buy it, I should return it to her. I planned to buy it, if the owner of the other phone came to buy it, I would return it, otherwise I would use it, the price of the iPhone 6 was also more than ten million VND. So I believed it and paid right away. I thought I got a bargain, but when I got to the store, I found out that it was a Chinese iPhone, only a few hundred thousand VND,” Ms. H. recounted the story.

Looking at the outside, few people know that Ms. H's phone is a fake.

Ms. T (District 4) also experienced a similar situation. A month ago, on her way home, she met a well-dressed young man riding a scooter with a Northern accent. The young man told her that his papers had been stolen and he had no money to return home, so he wanted to sell his iPhone 6 Plus for 5 million VND.

Although she knew nothing about machines or phones, she saw that the man was young, spoke properly, and was kind, so she just looked at the phone and nodded in agreement to hand over the money without haggling. "I thought I was helping both myself and others, but when I got to the store, they said it was a Chinese phone worth only a few hundred thousand," Ms. T. shook her head in frustration.

The “found” iPhone is a floating product bought from China for only 500,000-700,000 VND with the same appearance as the genuine product. Due to lack of knowledge, the victim easily believes that the iPhone is real, thinking that he is lucky to buy a genuine phone at a cheap price, so he wants to buy it quickly and sell it quickly. There are even cases where he generously gives the scammer a few hundred thousand VND because he sympathizes with their difficult situation. Only after the scammer has disappeared, when the victim examines the phone carefully or asks someone else to check, does he realize that he has been scammed.

It is not by chance that our ancestors have the saying “Cheap goods are bad”. Of course, not all cheap goods are bad or of poor quality, but being cautious is never redundant to avoid losing money and getting sick.

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