Excuse my ignorance about the US justice system, but do I get correctly that the Theranos folks got like 11-13 years? Seems disproportionate.
To be clear, this guy was doing some crime - he was using his skills to unlock stolen phones so that they could be resold, plus he broke into T-mobile's computer systems by various means long after his access was revoked.
But much of the press release is about how the worstest, baddest thing he did was help people get out of their phone contracts (thus acquiring a phone cheaply because so many carriers want to give you the latest greatest phone for $0 down and then collect huge monthly subscriptions). I've never bought a phone this way because it always ends up costing more. But if you want to buy your phone outright, bring in your own device, or prepay for your phone service, the big cell service providers in the US treat you like absolute dirt. So while I don't endorse this guy's actions, I also don't feel any sympathy for his 'victim'.
How so? I have walked into ATT and T-Mobile stores and purchased SIM cards very easily. With eSIM, I bet you do not even need to go to a store.
But they have a lot of franchised “authorized retailer” stores, where I assume the owner is working on commission, and so a simple SIM request might even net them nothing.
Nevertheless, with eSIM, I doubt there will be much reason to go to a store in the future.
In other words, if all it takes is to operate a store, gain familiarity with your vendor, and then swindle your way to $25,000,000, there might be a lot more copycats so you want to set an example.