Former Owner of T-Mobile Store Guilty of $25M Scheme to Unlock Cellphones
justice.gov
justice.gov
What a stupid thing cell phone locking is. Good job FBI doing nothing but carrying water for large corporations against users.
You are probably thinking of years ago where they would lock the phone, even if you paid for it. That's not the case with T-Mobile - as soon as the phone was paid off your monthly bill goes down (since you have finished the monthly payments), and they unlock it.
Locking to a network is not justified for that or any other reason.
But hey if the phone is stolen they get a new customer to bilk while they bilk the poor victim of theft at the same time. You only lock because you know you are not competitive on price or service but have a slick sales technique. Lock 'em in so when they wake up they're toast.
Network locking is foul, deceptive, dishonest and knowingly so. Hitch your wagon to that by all means...
If the car is in motion they speed limit it, and once it turns off it won't go back on (sometimes they'll allow it to go on, but with a very low speed).
I'm not sure the repo model is the one to copy here.......
Basically the phone is not yours until you pay for it, if it's not yours they can lock it. It's not really that controversial. If they kept the lock after that they would be unethical, but they don't. (Phone companies did do that in the past though.)
Until you pay for it, the object is not yours, I don't see why you are okay with hacking something that isn't yours.
I had multiple subsidized phones with a couple of carriers, which were never locked.
The contract was post payed and a minimum duration applied.
I get why they would lock a phone on a pre payment plan. But since you're anyway bound to the contract, post payed, for the duration of the contract why lock the phone in the first place?
Nowadays I just get a phone at retail and be done with it.
It's not like how it used to be that the phone was "free" if you paid for a year service, with T-Mobile they literally sell you the phone at whatever price, and add a monthly payment to your plan.
Not to mention stored passwords, stalking, all kinds of stuff.
I know everyone is quick to jump on the FBI but let’s get informed first.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-settled-lawsuit-womans...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522560/apple-repair-mult...
'Apple pushed successfully for its name to be removed from the filings, and it’s referred to only as a “customer” in the complaint.'
'The repair services were performed by Pegatron's subsidiary, PTSI, pursuant to a Repairs Services Agreement ("RSA") between Customer, Pegatron and PTSI. '
> To gain unauthorized access to T-Mobile’s protected internal computers, Khudaverdyan obtained T-Mobile employees’ credentials through various dishonest means, including sending phishing emails that appeared to be legitimate T-Mobile correspondence, and socially engineering the T-Mobile IT Help Desk. Khudaverdyan used the fraudulent emails to trick T-Mobile employees to log in with their employee credentials so he could harvest the employees’ information and fraudulently unlock the phones.
> Working with others in overseas call centers, Khudaverdyan also received T‑Mobile employee credentials which he then used to access T-Mobile systems to target higher-level employees by harvesting those employees’ personal identifying information and calling the T-Mobile IT Help Desk to reset the employees’ company passwords, giving him unauthorized access to the T-Mobile systems which allowed him to unlock and unblock cellphones.
Does anyone know how much he was selling unlocks for? I'm shocked that he brought in $25 million doing this.
The Wayback machine shows that one of his website also advertised AT&T and Sprint unlocks: https://web.archive.org/web/20171203060414/http://www.unlock... I'm assuming he was also phishing those employees, but they just haven't sued him yet.
EDIT: There's a lot of misinformation about unlocking in this thread. US carriers have been required to provide unlocking services for phones since 2014 after the 1-year payback period is up ( https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phone-unlocking#:~:text=Car.... ). Locked cell phones were usually sold at a discount or via promotions with the locking used as a way to enforce recoupment of the subsidy. Back then, you could often buy an unlocked version of the phone at a higher retail price because it wasn't subsidized. That's mostly disappeared now and phones aren't really subsidized the same way much any more.
Oh nevermind
>Khudaverdyan obtained more than $25 million for these criminal activities. He used these illegal proceeds to pay for, among other things, real estate in Burbank and Northridge.
I bet a lot of those phones would have ended up in a landfill anyway.
> Khudaverdyan obtained more than $25 million for these criminal activities. He used these illegal proceeds to pay for, among other things, real estate in Burbank and Northridge.
wire fraud + conspiracy to commit wire fraud
money laundering + conspiracy to launder money
accessing a computer to steal information + to defraud
If (I admit I don't know the details) those pairs were both for the same activity, it shouldn't be allowed to double charge an offender.
Still, something about the process seems "unfair" to me.
Edit: judging by the downvotes people seem unaware that phones are unlocked once their monthly plan is paid. I'm perplexed as to how you think it's okay for you to get a phone for like 8 bucks and then move to a different carrier without paying the rest.
It's literally a monthly payment plan for a phone, and they lock it until you pay it in full.
I see nothing bad about this at all. It's not like in the past where they lock your phone forever - with T-Mobile as soon as you fully pay for it they unlock it.
Or, maybe, give a discount contractually bound to staying with the operator for a fixed amount of time instead of locking the phone forever?
It may sound outrageous but what about providing quality service so that customers willingly stay with the operator instead of keeping them hostages?
The take the price of the phone, divide it into 12, add that to your monthly bill until you pay it off, and unlock it when you are done with the payments.
You can! Nothing stopping you from buying, say, the latest iPhone at retail price without the postpaid subsidies.
The law also requires that carriers unlock any locked phones after the postpaid contract period is up (if customer actually paid it off): https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phone-unlocking
If you're suggesting that we restrict rights to optionally buy/sell subsidized phones and pay them off over a 12-month period, I can't get behind that. Let the people choose which financial model they want. No need to restrict postpaid programs just because people don't like the idea of locking during payback periods.
It does not sound ridiculous, because unlocked phones have been available for purchase at full price for over a decade in the US, and longer in most other countries.
No one has been forced to enter into a contract with a mobile network that stipulates their phone be locked to the network for a long, long time.
Except that is actually what is happening in reality. So yeaaahhh...
But even in asking that it kind of highlights that their money probably comes from locking people into their network rather than selling hardware...
EDIT: T-Mobile is also probably the perfect example because their network coverage sucks in comparison to Verizon -- at least where I have lived. They probably lock their phones because nobody would use their network (again, at least where I live).
They can pay for the phones up front like almost everywhere else in the world, or they can pay for it in instalments like buying a freezer or car. What has network service got to do with the price of the phone itself?
It's been like this since 2014. I actually wonder how many of the people using this guy's service simply didn't know that they could get their phones unlocked for free from the carrier (assuming they were actually paying their bills for their postpaid subsidized locked phone).