Three people, two men and a woman, have been arrested in Carmona on charges of crimes against intellectual property (selling fake iPhones) and other scams.
The police operation began in October 2011 after a number of complaints about fake iPhones. One of the detainees was responsible for buying the phones from countries outside the EU, a second was responsible for collecting them and the third was responsible for selling them via the internet.
A website was set up and to avoid problems, the contact numbers were changed every couple of weeks. In one quarter, the scammers received €18,745 euros. In some instances the iPhones were advertised as ‘immitation’, in other cases not.
At the time of the arrests there were reportedly 14 phones ready to be shipped.