Eh, fake receipts are fairly easy to knock out.

When I managed a hospital's iPhone deployment I made it a point to always back up our receipts electronically because I have... had to make quite a few emails to AppleCare Security to release a few Activation Locked devices. It's not a terribly difficult process once you've done it a couple times, and I reasonably think I could release as many phones as I wanted these days with enough fake receipts.

with an MDM and Apple's Device Enrollment Program you don't even need to worry about this anymore[0]

[0]: https://www.apple.com/mx/business-docs/DEP_Guide.pdf

Hahahah when I worked at the hospital my director's answer to any of that was "Exchange is our MDM" despite me pushing for it, so I was stuck with the receipts regardless.

... My personal stuff is enrolled into my own personal Jamf instance and because I went through a bunch of motions with Apple Business my personal phones and Macs are all DEP locked ;)

I would love to go this route but the entry seems blocked unless you have a business with a DUNS number. Am I right in that assumption?

Hah, no.

It's mind-bogglingly easy to bypass MDM/DEP on even a T2-enabled/Apple Silicon MacBook.

Like three minutes, and not overly complex. Without spelling it out here, null route three DNS entries, install macOS Monterey, edit /etc/hosts similarly, and then upgrade to Sonoma. You can even remove the null routing after (it's only needed to bypass network calls in the installer).

Nothing broken, no errors, 100% DEP-escaped.

I suspect that the only thing you can't do at that point is reset to the OOB experience for selling it.

Interesting. Nothing similar for iPads and iPhones? Except jailbreak.

The fake receipt Is the easy part, it’s the staffing and logistics and risk to send people into lots of Apple stores to use them. One, sure. But an organized theft ring stealing 1000 iPhones a month is probably not going to work at that scale.

There are lots of Apple Stores, many in jurisdictions that don't prioritize vigorous prosecution of small thefts or mere possession-of-stolen-property. There are lots of individuals who'd take the chance to make a quick buck. So it doesn't need to be one scaled organization: just a functioning black market.

Imagine the false docs are often accepted, rather than triggering a criminal prosecution. The practical maximum downside may be mere impoundment of the device, rather than a conviction/jailing.

(And, even that would require Apple's policy to be to assertive & confrontational: "you presented us suspicious documentation, we're holding this device – that you carried here, in your possession – until police sort it out." Does Apple want to take the risk of that backfiring on them? Or would store staff, in practice, simply say: "we can't accept that documentation, you and your device should leave.")

Then Apple's lenience here will support a positive resale value of stolen devices, enough for the weakness in their systems to be exploited.