iPhone goods illegally sold by group

A group of over a dozen young workers, who were illegally selling refurbished iPhone products as new ones, have been jailed with reprieves and fined, after local police caught them preparing to unload some 1.1 million yuan ($174,500) worth of unlawful Apple goods, Yangpu District People's Court said Wednesday.

The 53-year-old leader of the 14-member group, identified only by his surname, Dong, was sentenced to three years in jail with a reprieve, while his workers received a year and a half under the same agreement.

They were also fined varying amounts for their involvement in the crime, with Dong fined the most, 30,000 yuan, while the workers were each respectively ordered to pay from 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan.

The group was caught last year in July, after local authorities raided Dong's workshop in Yangpu, where mostly migrant workers born after the 1990s helped make secondhand Apple merchandise look brand new so that the phones and accessories could be sold at non-discounted retail prices.

Many of the workers got involved in the scheme, seeing it as a chance to learn vocational skills, failing to realize they were breaking the law due to their lack of knowledge about intellectual property laws, the court said.