Police issue warning about counterfeit iPhone sales

It may look and act like an iPhone, but looks can be deceiving.

Douglasville Police posted a warning on their Facebook page after two separate reports of people buying what they believed were iPhones only to discover they were fakes.

"These particular phones it appears that the cases are actual iPhone cases--the metal case around it--or else they're extremely good duplicates," explained Major J.R. Davidson. "It's hard to tell just from appearance."

According to police, the inside of the phone is a cheaper model, but the crooks hide that by downloading an application.

"It's an Android operating system, but there's apps you can purchase on Android that make your phone mimic an iPhone," said Davidson.

In these cases, the criminals advertised the phones for sale on OfferUp, a classifieds app. Davidson said, however, they could use any online classifieds to find potential victims.

"I definitely think that there's probably other victims out there," said Major Davidson. "It's a crime that a lot of people are embarrassed about or they feel the police just won't be able to do anything anyway. So, they don't ever report it, but in cases like this where we do develop suspects, if everybody reports that they were a victim, we can often go back and link them together."

Police ask anyone who may have bought a counterfeit smartphone to contact police.