Buy and sell 1,000 stolen MacBooks

Testified in court, James admitted knowing the aforementioned MacBooks were stolen goods, smuggled out by school employees and many businesses. A 35-year-old man living in the state of California (USA) was found guilty and faces up to 10 years in prison for the act of consuming stolen goods.

Most of the MacBooks bought and sold by James are smuggled goods from the University America Apple insider

According to the indictment, from October 2015 to June 2020, James paid between $ 1,600 – $ 2,250 for each MacBook purchased and totaled up to about 1,000 devices. In which, 100 computers were stolen by employees of the IT department of Tesla leaked out, another 100 machines belonged to the University of Berkeley (California, USA).

The remaining about 800 machines are all provided by Eric Castenada. Eric Castenada’s sister works at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences (USA) with “a position that allows this person to collect computer equipment”, according to iMore. The Castenada sisters stole more than 800 machines to sell to James, illegally earning about $ 2 million. Both were found guilty in a separate trial unrelated to Philip.

The US court ordered James to return the amount of $ 2.3 million to Stanford, $ 256,000 to Tesla and $ 209,000 to the University of Berkeley. In addition, until July 2022, the court will make a final judgment on whether James will have to spend 10 years in prison for his actions.

The above numbers of computers are all machines MacBook MDM, the type of device that businesses or schools sign a distribution contract with Apple for use by employees. The buying organization will install system administration software for easy management before distributing it to employees. However, this device is very easy to be sold at a cheaper price compared to the “clean” machines that are not locked.

Recently, this type of machine has appeared on the market a lot and in some cases, users in Vietnam have bought it and have trouble after the device is locked because it cannot log in to the enterprise’s administrative account.