In Michigan, an iPod repairman named Nicholas Woodhams manipulated Apple’s warranty system by guessing at iPod serial numbers and using defunct credit cards to score 9,075 free iPod Shuffles from Apple, who was predictably pissed and filed a lawsuit against him last July. The government has also filed federal charges against him and wants to seize his estate, which includes his house, vehicles, $571,000, and seven Macs.
Woodhams pulled this off by entering serial codes into Apple’s site that provides replacements for failed iPods, using Visa-branded credit cards for collateral, and had Apple ship the replacements to a UPS box, where he’d pick them up and sell them for $49 a pop. Since Apple never got any defective iPods from Woodhams, they charged his credit cards, which wouldn’t accept any transactions. It’s a clever and complex scheme which even involved some of the employees from his iPod repair shops.
You’d think Apple would notice sending 9,000 iPods to the same address. And you’d think Woodhams would’ve known his scheme couldn’t work forever.
[via Ars Technica]
March 20th, 2009 at 10:42 PM
I’ve made a lot of improvements to FFScroll which makes it very usable without insane pressure or scrolling all over the place and while Smart Scroll enhances the way it scrolls, the scroll itself is done with entirely free software. Unfortunately this smoothness only works in vertical scrolling (up/down).
I’m working with Thomas on it.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:05 PM
It’s working great for me but unfortunately I have to remove it now because I like a very sensitive trackpad and the trackpad not only defaults to one of the lowest settings but it cannot be changed so the mouse is moving soooooooooooooo slow
March 20th, 2009 at 8:07 PM
Tried that. Didn’t work too well.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:58 PM
That’s pretty funny because I’m actually working on two-finger scrolling right now
March 20th, 2009 at 7:55 PM
Like a better trackpad. Mine’s starting to hurt my fingers.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:42 PM
Although I might prefer 571 Inspiron 1525 Hackintoshes with several hardware upgrades
March 20th, 2009 at 7:41 PM
That is true….
March 20th, 2009 at 7:25 PM
I’d be more envious of that $571,000. You could buy at least 28 Macs with that.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:09 PM
I kinda envy the guy… I mean jeez, seven macs!!!