Apple Geniuses Confirm: $80 iPhones Sold in Port Chester Are Fakes

Is there anything Apple's Geniuses can't do?

After Port Chester police nabbed a man suspected of selling fake iPhones, employees at the Greenwich Apple store took a look at the boxes and the devices and declared they were fakes. Whether they arrived at that conclusion after a ritual involving light beams and colored bubbles, the police report doesn't say.

Officers were called to the intersection of Westchester Avenue and Spring Street a few minutes before noon on Tuesday after a caller reported a man wearing a red shirt, toting a plastic bag filled with iPhones he was hawking to passersby, Lt. James Ladeairous said.

Police spotted a man fitting the description and confiscated the iPhones. Apple store employees -- dubbed "Geniuses" by the company -- told police the counterfeiters used the wrong font on the back of the fake devices, and the iPhone and Apple logos were printed, not engraved like the real deal. In addition, the Geniuses proclaimed, the bar codes were fabulated and didn't correspond to any product manufactured by Apple.

Oh, and the phones were missing the lithium ion batteries, too, a fact likely to disappoint anyone who hoped to use the phones as anything but drink coasters. 

Melgar Cecilio, 40, of Jamaica, Queens, was charged with fraudulent accosting, a misdemeanor. The street price for Cecilio's counterfeit iPhones? Eighty bucks, which may have convinced passersby they were getting a steal for devices that sell for upwards of $600 for high-end models.

Cecilio told police he needed rent money when they asked him where he got the fake phones. When officers asked the same question again, Cecilio told them he purchased the fakes on the street in White Plains.

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