Police squash $1.1 billion mobile phone smuggling ring in China

One of the largest mobile phone smuggling operations has been halted as Chinese officials arrested over 100 suspects in the country's biggest apprehension to date. With over 160 people involved in the operations and having an estimated worth of over 7.8 billion yuan ($1.1 billion), the rare bust by the Chinese police was surprising in itself as four suspects have already been sentenced to prison terms between 1 year to 15 years by a Zhuhai court in the southern province of Guangdong. Most of the phones being used on China Unicom are popular phones that are smuggled into the country informally which are then sold in China's so-called “gray market.” The problem is made more evident by the fact that there are 2 million iPhones being used on China Unicom that were not sold by them. Not only are these phones smuggled into the country, but there is still the rising problem of many counterfeit and other knock-off handsets that are manufactured in China which are illegally used on a network without a government license.

source: PC World via Textually