That's reminiscent of this incident from a few years ago [1]. A women in Australia took a SIM card from an electric meter and used it to download a bunch of movies and make a lot of calls, which the electric company found out when they got a bill for A$200k.
I can't find a link, but I have a vague recollection of a similar thing happening in the US.
Some cellular providers have data plans specifically for things like remote sensors that need to periodically reports small amounts of data, such as few hundred bytes an hour. They have low data caps and astronomical per kilobyte charges if you go over the cap.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/02/stolen_sim_woman_ja...