Your line of thinking is perfectly valid and that seems to be the defense argument, but overall the article seems to suggest that it was well organized. Someone

Your line of thinking is perfectly valid and that seems to be the defense argument, but overall the article seems to suggest that it was well organized. Someone in China was sending constant shipments of phones to them at various locations, and they would send back the real replacement phones and then get paid via one of the guys's mom. As you say, it's still possible that they legitimately believed the phones were just broken and they were helping facilitate repairs but to me it's a little hard to believe given how organized it was.