Apple has taken legal action against a former smartphone recycling partner GEEP Canada, for allegedly stealing and reselling at least 103,845 iPhones, iPads and watches that were meant to be disassembled.

Apple’s complaint, as reported by The Logic states, “At least 11,766 pounds of Apple devices left GEEP’s premises without being destroyed – a fact that GEEP itself confirmed.”

According to the report, Apple had sent over 500,000 devices between January 2015 and December 2017 to GEEP Canada. However, Apple did an audit after which it discovered 18% of those devices were still accessing the internet through cellular networks. Keep in mind that this does not account for Apple devices without a cellular radio. So the number of such gadgets out there could be even higher.

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The American iPhone maker has already filed a lawsuit against the recycling company seeking to obtain at least KES 2.4 billion. The defendant, on the other hand,  has denied all wrongdoing but has not denied that there was a theft. GEEP Canada claims that three of its employees are the ones who stole the devices. Apple disagrees stating that these employees were actually senior management and therefore did it on behalf of the company.

From Apple’s perspective, reselling these devices was never okay even if they happened to meet Apple’s quality or safety standards.

“Products sent for recycling are no longer adequate to sell to consumers and if they are rebuilt with counterfeit parts they could cause serious safety issues, including electrical or battery defects,” Apple said to The Verge.

This complaint was filed by the tech firm in January 2020 and has not worked with GEEP Canada since.