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Given how many devices were involved, it's fairly likely that a substantial number of them were stolen. You don't get to "hundreds of thousands" of devices unlo

Given how many devices were involved, it's fairly likely that a substantial number of them were stolen. You don't get to "hundreds of thousands" of devices unlocked by helping out individual customers. This sort of detail isn't going to be the focus of the DoJ press release because it's tangential to the case, and harder to prove than the (fairly clear-cut) unauthorized computer access angle. But it's in there -- notice the mention that the store owner's actions "allowed the phones to be sold on the black market", for example, as well as the prosecutor's statement that he "further[ed] the trafficking of lost and stolen cell phones".

thwayunion 4y ago
> You don't get to "hundreds of thousands" of devices unlocked by helping out individual customers. I don't doubt that there were stolen devices involved, but it's actually really easy for me to imagine finding a few hundred thousand customers who would pay for an "official" unblock so they can switch carriers. Some numbers: 1. >50% of customers are willing to change their carrier 2. T-Mobile has 100M customers Conservatively, this gives a TAM of at least millions, maybe 10s of millions, of customers per year. And he had, let's say, 500K, probably less, total customers over the years. So he was getting, what, 1% of non-phone-thief customers per year? Less? Easy to imagine getting there without working with phone theft rings.