The short answer is, yes they do. It's true that Apple has paired hardware on newer phones, and that combined with Find My has really taken a huge bite out of

The short answer is, yes they do. It's true that Apple has paired hardware on newer phones, and that combined with Find My has really taken a huge bite out of how many iPhones are stolen, but Shenzhen is Shenzhen. It is a mecca of technology, and you will find things that we'd generally otherwise consider impossible, like building your own iPhone piece by piece just walking around a market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA So even if they can't take a given part as-is, they can always find something useful. We'd think "the logic board is paired so it's useless": they'd think "ICs X,Y, and Z on the logic board commonly fail and now we got spares". There's been more than one case of stolen stuff ending up at the same place in Shenzhen: https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/02/find-my-iphone-app-discovers-stolen-phones-6000-miles-away-in-china-18205937/ https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/02/find-my-iphone-app-discovers-...