Foxconn Employee Faces 10-Year Prison Sentence For Stealing 5,700 iPhones Worth $1.5 Million (thenextweb.com) 45
A Taiwanese Foxconn manager faces a stiff prison sentence after he stole 5,700 iPhones from his employer, and went to sell them for $1.56 million. The Next Web reports: Foxconn is a tech manufacturing giant. It makes a lot of things, including laptops for HP, phones for Apple, games consoles for Sony, and its workers so depressed it has to install suicide nets. The Taiwanese manager at the center of this crime -- known only by his family name, Tsai -- worked in the testing department at Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, mainland China. According to Taiwanese prosecutors, Tsai ordered eight of his subordinates to smuggle out thousands of iPhones which were used by the company for testing and quality assurance purposes. These were destined to be scrapped after use. The stolen iPhones (mostly iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s models) made their way to stores in Shenzhen, and went on to make Tsai and his accomplices nearly $1.56 million USD (Tw$50 million). Tsai has since been charged with breach of trust and, if found guilty, he faces a maximum 10-year jail term.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. That, and the fact that they were going to be thrown away.
Re: (Score:2)
My thought was how did he expect to get away with dumping 5700 phones onto the market?
Alas, that's just noise. [lifewire.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well yes. Also, wooosh.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Talking to courts: "Millions of dollars of cash munee."
Seriously, if you're claiming "Billions in losses" to a jury Because Pirates then why are they mysteriously absent from your quarterly earning statement to your investors?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GP is trying to make a joke about the manager in question's surname "Tsai" sounding kinda like "Psy" (stage name of the Gangnam Style rapper).
Death sentence. (Score:1, Funny)
No fuss, no muss.
This is FOXXCONN, Just remove the safety nets at his end of the building and he will carry out the sentence himself.
$1.5M for 10Years is good (Score:2)
Lets face it. I doubt even a test lab Manager can earn $1.5M within 10 years of salary out there.
So 10 Years in prison can be a very bad unpleasant occupation but, for $1.5M it pays decently.
Re: (Score:3)
Implying you get to keep the proceeds of your crime?
Wish we'd come up with the name "fake news" sooner (Score:5, Informative)
That was fake news. The suicide rate at Foxconn was lower than that of the U.S. [businessinsider.com] at the time of the spike in suicides. The Foxconn suicide myth spread and persists for the same reason other fake news spreads and persists - the people spreading it want to believe it's true, and thus pass it on without first vetting it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Except in this case the people spreading it are journalists in the mainstream media, whose job it is to review these stories with a critical eye before publishing them. They want to believe factory workers in developing nations were being exploited by western corporations and thus were more prone to attempt suicide, so they recklessly published these stories perpetuating the myth, and still do. Foxconn installed the nets to try to make the Western media shut up, not because there was a greater suicide problem there than anywhere else. I have no love for Apple or Chinese assembly line labor, but this is one criticism they don't deserve.
Typical corporation (Score:2)
Corporate stooge: "We no longer want this item, so please add the plastic to the ocean!"
Opportunist Environmentalist: "But sir its a perfectly working device, surely we can sell it!"
Corporate stooge: "And tarnish our american overlords brand by selling a *USED* iphone! please go die now!"
Opportunist Environmentalist: "okay..."
Corporate stooge: "Now if you'll excuse me I have to switch over the lines to make pirated iphone parts so i can buy up property all over the world and make housing unaffordable for lo
Another way to look at it... (Score:2)
So the guy made $1.56 million on the phones, and the longest jail sentence he can get is 10 years. That works out to an annual salary of at least $150,000, assuming he was smart enough to put the money somewhere safe.
Not a bad wage.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Not a bad hourly wage, either. ;-)
So the guy was actually Taiwanese... (Score:2)
>Taiwanese manager at the center of this crime
A big surprise, a Taiwanese guy...
Back in ifone 3g era, most stolen phones were coming from local staff/managers.
A funny fact - this once was the reason Apple began demanding oems to physically destroy all devices that do not pasd QA/QC as they all were getting to the streets.