The federal prosecutors in Michigan filed indicted Michigan iPod repairman Nicholas Woodhams, under felony fraud and money-laundering charges (criminal charges), on Wednesday. Nicholas Woodhams was accused of fraudulently obtaining more than 9,000 replacement iPod Shuffles from the Cupertino, California based Apple Inc., by manipulating Apple repair and warranty programs.

In the documents filed in the Court, the prosecutors alleged that Nicholas Woodhams, resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was bale to obtain "9,075 iPod Shuffles from Apple by entering real serial numbers on a company site, designed to provide users with replacement iPods. He sold that fraudulently obtained iPods for $49 each.

According to the prosecutors, Woodhams has iPod repair business under the names iPod Mechanic, iMechanic and Pod Tradeup. He also operates Web sites under "iPod Mechanic," and "iMechanic" names, bur the sites were offline on Friday.

The prosecutors said, "Through trial and error, the defendant determined that he could guess valid, warranted serial numbers and enter then into Apple's Web site for 'replacement' units without ever in fact purchasing or processing the 'original' units. On an almost daily basis during the course of the scheme, the defendant compiled lists of manufactured or 'guessed' Shuffle serial numbers that would be accepted by Apple's Web site and dispatched them to part-time employees by hand or e-mail."

According to the prosecutors, Woodhams ran the scam between March 2006 and October 2007, and Apple filed a civil suit against Woodhams. Apple filed charges against Woodhams last July.