The second man in the two-person, $1.5 million Apple gift card heist was finally sentenced to prison.
According to Apple Insider, Jason Tout-Puissant will now serve a 60-month (five-year) prison sentence for his role in the scheme, following the conviction of co-conspirator Syed Ali to 37 months (just over three years) back in October last year.
The sentencing was announced by the Northern District of Texas' US Attorney's office via a post on the Justice.gov website. The post revealed that Tout-Puissant was sentenced by the same judge, Judge David Godbey, who also convicted his co-conspirator in the fraud several months earlier. Aside from that, the suspect is also ordered to pay Apple $1.26 million in restitution.
US attorney Chad Meacham was absolute in the sentencing, pumping out this fiery statement:
"If these defendants thought their million-dollar fraud would go unnoticed simply because they targeted a trillion-dollar company, they were sorely mistaken. The Justice Department will not tolerate fraud against any company, be it a multinational corporation or a mom-and-pop operation."
The two men were first charged back in 2019, but they weren't the only ones in on the Apple gift card heist. A still-unnamed third accomplice helped them pull off their fraud within a three-year span starting in 2015. But Ali, the first conspirator to get charged, wouldn't actually plead guilty to the fraud until May 2021.
He did so after an example of 26 digital gift cards stolen from Apple's Southlake Town Square store in Texas, themselves already worth $50,000, were presented in court. Afterward, he actually aided the authorities in their pursuit of Puissant, as also reported by Apple Insider.
Here's a statement from the FBI regarding the case:
"The FBI is committed to tackling fraud schemes from every angle, and today the defendants will now be held accountable. This carefully orchestrated scheme resulted in financial loss for a large corporation, and that fraud also victimizes American consumers."
How Were The Apple Gift Card Thieves Able To Pull It Off?
The way the Apple gift card thieves pulled their heist off is quite "devious," as they used Apple's own devices to do it over three years.
According to MacRumors, the convicted scammers used a device called an "Isaac," which was only exclusive to Apple employees. All workers at the Cupertino giant's retail locations use their Isaac devices around the store, which allows them to sell products and check the store's inventory.
To perform their scam, one of the thieves walked into unsuspecting stores to try to steal Isaac. Afterward, the accomplice will sit outside the store, using the device still connected to the store's Wi-Fi network. They will then use the employee's account who's still logged into the device to steal the actual gift cards.
This is among the most recent scams to target Apple in the past few years, including a former employee defrauding the company of $10 million within a ten-year span.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
