iPhone Fraud Earns Bellevue Man 5 Years In Prison

BELLEVUE, WA - A local man accused of defrauding Apple Inc. and a former local bank was sentenced this week to five years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Maziar Rezakhani, 27, last July pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud, one count of bank fraud, and one count of filing a false income tax return. In addition to prison time, he will pay $3.5 million in restitution and will forfeit personal property, including luxury cars and $100,000 in cash.

According to the DOJ, Rezakhani turned an iPhone reselling operation into a scam by falsely claiming that a shipment of phones had been lost. In September 2014, Rezakhani ordered 1,280 phones from Apple to re-sell overseas; but when the shipment arrived, he contacted Apple and told them that the boxes contained stone tiles rather than phones. Apple would not issue a refund, so Rezakhani had the charges reversed on the credit cards he used to make the purchases. Investigators later discovered that Rezakhani had bought the stone tiles himself.

On top of that, according to the DOJ, Rezakhani secured a line of credit from Foundation Bank in Bellevue, which he used to pay the $25,000 monthly rent at his penthouse; he also bought several luxury cars with the money. Oregon's Pacific Continental Bank bought Foundation Bank in 2016.

After that, Rezakhani attempted another scam involving iPhones, according to the DOJ. He shipped a number of pumice bricks via Federal Express, but claimed that the boxes contained $5 million worth of iPhones. Rezakhani tried to file a claim for the phones with Federal Express and an insurance company, but no money was paid, according to the DOJ.

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