I wonder if the postal services could create an additional service which calculates a heat map of the weight distribution for the package. You could then very accurately I imagine determine if there is actually an iPhone in there, and if someone shows a photo of clay it will be obvious they are scamming if the weight distribution passed as an iPhone distribution during transit.
This is such a complex solution, I'm sure it would be an additional fee, time consuming to implement, and in general, outside the scope of most shipping carriers.
Yep. This also wouldn't protect against the "it was damaged in transit" scam either. Depending on how much time you had, I could see someone swapping just enough of a working handset onto a broken handset to "prove" it is was broken, then returning it.
