The number of scams and outright theft that happens online everyday is staggering. From bogus products sold on eBay to hackers stealing credit card data from unsuspecting websites the Internet is a major source of crime.

One Michigan man named Nicholas Arthur Woodhams has found that crime may pay, but only for a while. MacWorld reports that Woodhams ran a scam against Apple from March 2006 to October 2007 where he would send in replacement requests for iPod shuffle devices.

Apple would ship the iPods to him and he secured the return of the supposedly defective units with a pre-paid Visa credit card that would deny charges when Apple tried to charge when the defective unit wasn’t returned. The man would then sell the shuffles for $49 each online. Woodhams reportedly stole 9,000 iPods this way before Apple filed suit against him in June of 2008. The man now faces federal charges relating to the theft.

MacWorld