That iPhone you purchased online from an unauthorized seller might be a fake.
Police in China have busted a major counterfeit iPhone maker that shipped tens of thousands of phony Apple handsets out of the country, according to The Wall Street Journal. This wasn't a small operation: The unnamed Beijing-based firm reportedly had six hidden production lines and hundreds of employees working on counterfeit iPhones.
In total, police said the company mass-produced and exported more than 41,000 bogus iPhones and other tech goods worth upwards of $19.4 million this year alone, the report notes. Police first caught wind of the scheme after a batch of fake iPhones was seized in the U.S. in May.
Police in China took nine suspects into custody, though the masterminds of the scheme appear to be a 43-year-old male surnamed Yu and his 40-year-old wife surnamed Xie. The couple reportedly purchased used mobile mainboards and other fake parts from foreign countries, then hired hundreds of workers to assemble the products in Beijing while masquerading the business as a tech repair firm.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment about news of the crackdown.
This isn't the first fake iPhone ring police in China have busted. Back in 2011, police arrested five people for making and selling fake iPhones in Shanghai. Those phones, which reportedly used a mix of legit and counterfeit parts, worked similarly to real iPhones, just with shorter battery life.
That same year, an American blogger living in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming uncovered five electronics retailers posing as official Apple Stores, complete with long wooden display tables, spiral staircases, and employees clad in typical Apple t-shirts.