Today I happened upon a sale for an iPhone 17 Pro. I’d arranged the meeting, but I’d been so leery of the sale that I didn’t even bring money with me. The seller, I’ll call him Isaiah, was cordial, but seemed to be full of stories. As he was describing the phone, it was filled with extraneous story details. I asked him if he bought the phone from Apple and his response was, “Thanks for asking, there’s nothing wrong with the phone, it wasn’t directly who gotten it, it was one of my employees I sent to do so, he had mentioned the day of pickup they were out, and he got it somewhere in Yorkdale mall, it came with the receipt and bag, and I can show you the warranty, tho I think because there’s no user signed it, there’s none right now.”

There were more red flags than the running of the bulls on opening day. In one of his images, the serial number was also visible – D4CM67VT64, so using a simple Google search, there was a single result that pointed to another sale, seemingly different than this. It’s a common practice for fake iPhone’s to come in boxes with serial numbers that are searchable and legitimate. A quick search on Apple’s own warranty coverage page showed that serial number as an “iPhone 17 Pro” but it was listed as purchased in September of 2025.

I went back to Isaiah and messaged him if he had been trying to sell this since November of 2025, and his response was, “Nope I haven’t been tryna sell it, I simply got a different phone that I’m using to conduct my business on, and I missed the return date to give the phone back so well I’m cutting my loses.” So, there were enough inconsistencies to avoid this sale, but something about Isaiah that made em think he’s wasn’t scamming. In fact, he’d agreed to meet in the lobby of a police station. Something wasn’t adding up, so I did what any curious person should do and set a meet with Isaiah.

Meeting at a coffee shop so we could sit down, and remember, without any money, Isaiah walked in an sat to my right at a four seat table¹. He walked in with a large coat, a nice hand bag and a rather large gold ring on his left hand that seemed overly oxidized. Isaiah had an older silver iPhone as his main phone. When he flipped that phone over, I could see the back glass on his personal phone was cracked. Isaiah did not seem nervous or in a rush and he didn’t give of a guarded vibe². Isaiah placed the “new” phone on the table while saying, “I know you want to see a legitimate phone and not some Android phone with a skin on it.³”

From this point there was no way to get photos, but it would have been great. I picked up this iPhone and it felt light. The phone did not fit in the box correctly. Immediately keying into the screen, the edged were raised from the chassis. I immediately commented that this is not how iPhones are. That something was off. Isaiah listened and seemed genuinely curious about what I was doing. I next checked the software, and it seemed to be an installation of legitimate iOS software. Sure, it was a little laggy and slower, but this was Apple software. I told Isaiah that I wouldn’t be buying this; that I couldn’t confirm it was fake, but I was not confident that it was legitimate. Isaiah did something unexpected, instead of running as if he’d been caught, he actually asked me to look closer and figure out what was going on.

Picking up the phone again, I started to look closer. Given I did not have a authentic reference iPhone to work from, there were limits, but I now had time to investigate. First thing I noticed was a SIM card slot. As I understood it, iPhone 17’s in North America did not include this but okay. The color of the phone’s back seemed consistent with the new orange version. I went back to the software and connected it to the Internet and tested some of the Apple software. This was alright. Back to the Settings -> General -> About, I noticed some serious and glaring inconsistencies.

Here, I copied the serial number and pasted it in Apple’s warranty check, it returned an iPhone XR from 2019. I copied the model number and the same model was returned. Going back to the about screen, it clearly indicated “iPhone 17 pro.” This phone had clearly activated on Apple’s network because it had gotten past the welcome screen. Then, I copied the IEMI and tested it on devicecheck.ca and that returned an unknown IMEI. While I did not have a SIM card to test with, it was a good guess to say this phone would not connect to a wireless network.

It appeared to me what I was looking at was an iPhone XR board inserted into an iPhone 17 chassis. Certain versioning details had been re-written inside the device, but on cursory examination, this looked like a legitimate iPhone 17. For context, this is a $90 device slapped into the frame of a new phone so it could be sold off at $1,500 or more market price. Not a bad way to scam people, especially if you know they’re looking specifically for Android-looking software and defeating that means a sale in the moment.

As for Isaiah, did he know this was a fake phone ahead of time? I’m not sure I’ll ever answer that. He may have been duped into buying this, but some of his actions tell me that he’s had some difficulty selling this (even of the buyer couldn’t figure out why the phone was fake). The fakers are more and more clever, and more sophisticated than ever. Be safe and be aware. Never rush through a purchase. As I write this, well over a week past my encounter with this seller, his listing was still online with what appear to be fake Airpods.

1. Not across from me which is a common way to give others more space. ↩︎
2. These are common traits of scammers in online sales, they’re super guarded and want to rush you. ↩︎
3. This comment suggested, as did others, that he knew more about these things and was acting like he didn’t. ↩︎