Buying iphones outside of Apple always come with some risk involve. My advice is to purchase from reputable shops to minimize that risk.
It got my attention when the price is retailed lower price than at Apple store, giving me a suspicion that there would be something sneaky about it. I normally don't visit Ah Beng shops physically, but if they are online, it's easier for me to scrutinize them.
In this case, they claimed the handset to be local teleco set. It just doesn't make sense to me that it's a sealed box if it's a local teleco set, because our local telecos all have policy to inspect phone with customer before letting them take the phone home.
Since I don't get a chance to personally inspect this Shopee seller's product, I guess in this case, for this listing (the one discussed in this thread), I shall give a benefit of doubt.
Every customer who purchases an iPhone deserves the best. While it's always easy to say they should've bought from official Apple store to not get cheated, but I'd still side the victim of scam over the seller any time. Maybe I'll less sympathize educated/tech savvy people, but there are many people in the world who are less tech savvy or less educated, and just because their field of expertise isn't tech nor have high level education, I'd not demonize the victims or look down on them for their tech savviness or education level, even though i'm tech savvy and higher education level than them.
In this recent period, I've encountered friends who intend to purchase phones online. When they show me listing (not specifically Shopee), it just got me that the listings are often deviously claim the phone to be "brand new" and "sealed" but a fine print written in T&C they define
brand new as "as good as brand new" even though they affirmatively used the word
sealed on product page.
This is increasingly common online. It comes to the extent that I'm highly suspicious of every phone listing online. Not everyone can differentiate what is a reputable vendor, source, reference and not. Not everyone has the ability to read T&C.