"Illegally unlocking" - whatever that really means.
Your hardware, your choice.
Law made to the detriment of consumers, for the benefit of corporations.
See article:
A former T-Mobile store owner was found guilty of breaking into the
wireless provider's internal system allowing the rogue businessman to
unlock and unblock smartphones. The illegal activities took place from
2014 to 2019 when 44-year-old Argishti Khudaverdyan unlocked phones from
T-Mobile and other carriers' networks allowing those buying the
handsets to use them with other network providers.
The scheme took in $25 million in ill-gotten revenue for the defendant and his partner
This
hurt mobile carriers, many of which give huge discounts or give away
free phones to customers who agree to be locked into their networks for
years. Khudaverdyan also unlocked phones that carriers had blocked after
they were reported stolen or lost. The guilty verdict was announced by
the Department of Justice in a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.
T-Mobile was one of the carriers that got ripped off in the scheme
The 44-year-old, Khudaverdyan, who lives in Burbank,
California, was found guilty last Friday of one count of conspiracy to
commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, two counts of accessing a
computer to defraud and obtain value, one count of intentionally
accessing a computer without authorization to obtain information, one
count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, five counts of money
laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Prosecutors
said during the trial that the scheme generated $25 million in
illegally attained revenue as removing blocks on these phones allowed
them to be sold on the black market. Khudaverdyan unlocked handsets that
had been locked to T-Mobile,
AT&T, and Sprint's networks. He and a partner co-owned Top Tier Solutions Inc., a T-Mobile store in Eagle Rock Plaza, Los Angeles.
T-Mobile
terminated the contract it had with Top Tier in 2017 because of
Khudaverdyan's suspicious behavior and unauthorized unlocking of phones.
He advertised his illegally unlocked phones through brokers, email, and
websites including "unlocks247.com." While promoting the illegally
unlocked phones, Khudaverdyan advertised them as being official unlocked
T-Mobile phones.
Khudaverdyan will be sentenced on October 17th and could end up with a long stretch in jail
Unlocking
these phones allowed T-Mobile customers to use other carriers costing
the company revenue from service contracts and equipment installment
plans. To access T-Mobile's internal computer systems, Khudaverdyan
tricked T-Mobile employees by using phishing emails to trick them into
revealing information. These fake emails looked so much like legitimate
T-Mobile
correspondence that the employees passed along their sign-in
credentials allowing the convicted felon to break into T-Mobile's
computers.
Khudaverdyan also elicited help from
overseas call centers to receive employee credentials. Armed with this
information, the bad actor then called the T-Mobile IT Help Desk to
reset the employees' company passwords. This gave him access to the
T-Mobile systems that he used to unlock phones. More than 50 T-Mobile
employees had their credentials stolen and hundreds of thousands of
handsets were unlocked during the years that this scheme was active.
Sentencing
will take place on October 17th and Khudaverdyan will face statutory
maximum sentences of 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud
count, 20 years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit money
laundering, 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering count,
five years in federal prison for each count of intentionally accessing a
computer without authorization to obtain information, five years in
federal prison for the count of accessing a computer to defraud and
obtain value, and a mandatory two years in federal prison for aggravated
identity theft.
His partner and co-defendant,
Alen Gharehbagloo, 43, of La Cañada Flintridge, already pleaded guilty
on July 5th to to three felonies: conspiracy to commit wire fraud,
accessing a protected computer with intent to defraud, and conspiracy to
commit money laundering. He will be sentenced on December 5th.
Source:phonearena.com
