U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham announced this week that the perpetrators of a $1.5 million Apple gift card scheme have been sentenced to a combined eight years in federal prison.

Syed Ali, 29, and his co-conspirator, Jason Tout-Puissant, 27, both pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2019. Mr. Ali was sentenced in October 2021 by U.S. District Judge David Godbey to 37 months in federal prison; Mr. Tout-Puissant was sentenced today by the same judge to 60 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.26 million in restitution to Apple. 

According to plea papers, Mr. Tout-Puissant admitted that he stole multiple Apple point-of-sale devices – nicknamed “Isaacs” – from an Apple store in Southlake, Texas, then sat outside the store, logged onto the store’s Wi-Fi network, and loaded thousands of dollars of fraudulent store credits onto gift cards.

He then loaded the gift cards onto Apple Passbook, an application that generates QR codes for the value of gift cards, and sent screenshots of those codes to Mr. Ali.

According to the indictment, the conspiracy involved more than $1.5 million in fraudulently obtained Apple gift cards. For more on this, read the full Department of Justice press release here.