The Cincinnati branch of the US Customs has reportedly seized a number of counterfeit AirPods and other wireless buds made from companies like Bose, Sony, and others.
The Customs office said that they had, "inspected five shipments of headsets from China and found what appeared to be 5,000 fake Apple AirPods and 1,372 fake Apple AirPods Pro."
All of the shipments were en route to one particular address in Brownsville, Texas. Each shipment was manifested with a value of $312, the real products would have been worth $1.3 million.
According to The Verge, the counterfeit AirPods can have a valid serial number, imitate the earbud's pairing process and are made using genuine AirPods molds taken from companies that manufacture the product for Apple.
Besides AirPods, The Information reported that Customs also seized counterfeit earbuds from other companies worth $62.2 million and these numbers have risen since 2020 where the shipments seized totalled $61.7 million.
Amusingly, OnePlus went through an embarrassing controversy last year when the customs seized a shipment of OnePlus earbuds mistaking them for fake AirPods. The shipment was valued at $398,000.
Apple has said that it is working with law enforcement and e-commerce sites to help spot the fakes and prevent the customers from getting taken advantage of wherever possible.
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