Well... you jumped directly into a hacking gray area. Is the Japple a hacked item... hmmmm... that's hard to say. The item itself is not hacked. It does, however, appear as a glitch when you hack your money higher than the maximum amount a character can hold in his wallet.
The money in your wallet, as any player knows, cannot exceed 99,999 bells. Anything above that much and you have to carry it in bags in your pockets, and each bag cannot hold more than 99,999 bells. Now, if a hacker edits the amount of money in his wallet on a save game to max it out (taking the hexadecimal value of his on-hand money and changing it to FFFFFFFF), then reloads the save game, the game will show 999,999,999 bells IN HIS WALLET.
Next, the player clicks his wallet and tells the game to put ALL the money in a bag. Normally, this is never a problem, because the max amt. for the wallet and max amt. for a bag match at 99,999 bells. But since the wallet contains way more than that... a glitch appears, in the form of the Japple. And the person still shows the same amt. in his wallet, so he can create it over and over again, costing him NOTHING.
Is it hacked? You decide.