Four men were arrested in Mentor after the cell phone scam stopped at the Mayfield Heights Best Buy

MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio – Best Buy management reported Sept. 23 that a man traded in a counterfeit cell phone for a new phone and also received $129 for the price difference.

They said the man bought a $1,400 phone from the store around 1:45 p.m. He returned to the store about 30 minutes later and returned the phone for a different model. At this point, they did not realize that he had carefully opened the first phone, removed it from the box and replaced it with a fake phone.

They then learned that the same man may have gone to the Best Buy Mentor location and attempted to return another counterfeit phone using the receipt from the Mayfield Heights location.

At the time of the report, Mentor police had arrested four people involved in the theft. One was the suspect in the Mayfield Heights theft. The 22-year-old man from Michigan was reported missing from Detroit.

He was charged with theft by deception and unauthorized use of a communications device.

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