T-Mobile gets jacked, around $8.2M in phones vanished like a David Copperfield act
So here’s what we just heard: one of T-Mobile’s warehouses were broken into over the weekend and around 36,000 phones were stolen! The phones stolen are said to be worth around $8.2 million! Yeah peoples, not fun. What’s even crazier is that the majority of what was stolen were the Sidekick devices. T-Mobile’s actively tracking the IMEIs to see if any are activated on their network and is said to be working with law enforcement officials to trace the handsets to dealers that potentially activate them. Totally insane! Here’s the internal email to T-Mobile dealers, after the jump!
"Wanted to let you all know that one of our warehouses was broken into over the weekend and some 36,000 phones were stolen (worth about 8.2 Million). The most significant phones stolen were the Sidekick phones. Please make sure you inform the dealers who like to purchase gray market handsets that we are aggressively working with law enforcement to prosecute anyone who has these handsets. We do know the IMEI’s of the stolen phones and once they end up on our network we will go to the dealer code that activated the phone. So if your dealers get a call about Sidekicks and the deal is too good to be true you will know why."
Yea $8.2 million ain’t gonna get you too much with the dollar in its shithole.
Found SK LX’s on E-BAY for $79.99…stolen…or not?
WHO KNOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Hahaha lmao
Even if the phones can’t be used I’m pretty sure they can be broken down and sold for parts
And the memory cards that come standard with the phones can at least be sold
And the accessories…
Aww poor tmo this is what they get for all the times I had to be on hold for a million billion hours with their customer service department, or all the times my sidekick lx has no connectivity and all my numbers go byebye for hours at a time…
Sorry they get NO sympathy from me.
And if my rates go up just to cover their rich asses I will drop them and get an iphone in 2.5 seconds lol
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I work at a T-mobile call center if these devices are used with any sim the IMEI will show up no matter what,prepaid or pospaid and will be tracked they will not be unlocked and no other carrier supports the Danger server these devices require to function. We will get these crooks
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Some people are so stupid ya can’t even hide that many phones for one and 2 obviously its gonna be pointless to try n sell the phones once people hear that no ones gonna buy sidekicks and rate plans gonna go higher but thank you morons!
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eBay and Craigslist…
Some of you make me wonder.
That won’t throw up a flag now will it
All of a sudden 10,000 SideKicks hit eBay.
These fools were slick enough to pull of a pretty monumental heist and you think they’re going to hock them on eBay for the next couple of years.
If you stole a famous painting, would you try to turn around and sell it to a museum?
Come on people.
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Funny how they can track the IMEI numbers when it’s their building that gets broken into but when a dealer has equipment stolen it’s too bad for the dealer.
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@US
If you work for T-Mobile why is it that you don’t know that the Sidekick is not exclusive to T-Mobile?
Soon it will become exclusive, but for now Suncom is another US carrier that has the Sidekick available. Outside of the US there are other companies that have the Sidekick(Hiptop).
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Wow…
I can not even believe this happened. I wonder how long it will take them to find them. You know cell phones have gold pieces in them and like one person said they could just take the phone apart and sell the pieces.
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i think that this was in inside job with out a doubt. they will get caught tmobile dont play with money ask zeta - jones thus the reason she is no longer the speaker with tmobile. its going to end quite badly. when they are caught they are going to want to know what sunlight feels like. people dont underestimate tmobile. they will do what need to do to get results ie getting their money back.
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You can only activate SK devices on networks that have dedicated Danger Hiptop servers.
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Nice. I guess the author of this article doesn’t know about prepositional phrases.
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Yeah that had to be an inside job for them to get away with that amount of phones. I think if you activate the phone as prepaid they will still know who did it because someone has to get credit for the sale.
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What I would like to know is how 36,000 phones comes out to 8.2 mill. Even at $1,000 each that is only 3.6 mill. What.ls up with that.
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NOTE: T-Mobile USA customers can use their T-Mobile Sidekick devices on another carrier’s network using the tri-band frequency built into the device. The customer is charged for roaming on the other carrier’s network.
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Interesting that they care about IMEIs when it’s their own equipment…but when a paying customer has her device stolen, TMO won’t do anything to help and most certainly won’t block the IMEI or cooperate with authorities by reporting the new MIN or GPS location of someone using a stolen handset. Pathetic.
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wow that sucks
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Might want to check your math on that. 36,000 phones x $1,000 is $36,000,000. The approximate value of the phones was $227.78 each. Assuming they were all sidekicks, which I don’t think they were. But that’s the average unit cost.
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The ones thast were stolen WERE T-Mobile exclusive (branded and LOCKED) Duh….
BTW I think it was an inside job and they are going to Bury them and Collect insurance money, they must have been the Old ones that crapped out…
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I think that the 8.2 million is over estimated but that’s for insurance purpose. Also the warehouse most have over 12 different models of cell phone beside the Sidekick why is T-mobile not mentioning the other cell phone. this wasn’t a lost for T-mobile is an embarrassment. We the costumers are going to pay down the pipe-line for all the stolen cell phone.
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Guys it doesn’t matter who stole it an where an how they gonna make money on it.
what matters is:
1. it happened and no matter how it’s gonna turn out for the people who pulled it of, it’s still a historic heist.
2. T-mobile plans won’t go up, the only thing that will go up is the insurance premium (i’m sure that everything is insured), security company (which is most likely an idependent contractor) will probably get sued.
3. If you pull off heist like that, then you know what to steal and how to make money on it.
in a worth case scenario for the heisters…-they’ll sell it back to t-mobile in Europe or Asia half-priced. (which as a result might out to be very profitable deal for t-mobile)
4. T-mobile will do something really quick to get it settled, because if they don’t, people will start buying less SKs and SK plans, and as a result T-Mo might loose millions of customers
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tmo does not have the ability to track the ones directly track imei numbers since service is based on sim cards not imei numbers. This is now out of tmo hands now. The Feds are handeling it now with it. They can see when a dealer activates the phone because they have to tell us the imei where customers existing dont that is how tmo knows and under a stolen they dont activate at stores just put sim in for existing and working that is why they can track these and not stolen ones just how the system works.
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haah just buy the phone and activate it if the po po comes then say fuck that i aint gonna return shit they can’t do nuthing
and if t-mobile cut the service then i’ll sue them for not following the contract
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T-Mobile mostly certainly can track IMEIs. I am a switch tech and I have done it myself. When you make a call, the IMEI is part of the caller records. Although I do not believe there is a US carrier that utilizes the EIR which could be used to blacklist all these phones, the MSC/VLR can issue a request for the phone to send the IMEI. This happens on every phone call made by a device.
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Its sad but they had it coming!
Have they ever heard of Karma?
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every phone used displays an imei number to that phone number… I.E. You call customer care, they type your number into the imei tracking tool, and bingo, everyphone you have ever used shows up, included the model number, imei, and dates of use.
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