AT&T and T-Mobile victims of $22M handset scam
Funny, usually it’s the carriers doing the robbing. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, eight men were indicted yesterday for allegedly using customer data to swindle AT&T and T-Mobile USA out of roughly $22 million worth of cell phones. Two former cell phone shop owners from Brooklyn, NY and six others have been formally charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft surrounding the scam. The men reportedly used dealer access to the carriers’ systems in order to obtain customer data, and then used the identities of said customers to obtain handsets without paying for them. If convicted, the perpetrators face up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy charge alone. Key takeaway: if the recession has hit your cell phone shop hard, it’s probably a good idea to seek out a new line of work rather than exploiting your customers and scamming your suppliers. Just saying.
this happen to someone I know, they were being charged for 2 new iphone’s. At&t looked into it and found out it was fraud so they took it off the account.
Ah, so that’s why our procedures changed this month…
actually happens all the time. this is by far nothing new. i work at tmobile and people come in wanting a new phone and like a year before they went into an indirect to make a payment and they extended their contract. my belief has always been that tmobile needs to have better regulations about which of these crazy people they allow to sell their phones
EDIT: I mean the indirect would extend their contract even though all they went in for was to make a payment. wanted to make that clear
Everyone’s gotta eat
Is it because of the SIM card? You can get an unlock phone & put anybodies SIM card in & bam! Got a new phone. No CDMA carrier in the article. Just mentioning…
By trolling the customer data they can probably find users who are eligible for upgrade, have not taken it, and are unlikely to do so. They can then call in and “claim” a free, or reduced price, handset and resell it.
T-Mobile reseller also tried to screw me as well by not processing my return of a new phone/contract after 3 days. Corporate support took care of it even though I wasn’t a customer.
Hah…there’s another one. Several AT&T reps were fired (not charged with a crime, though) when they were creating fictitious cell accounts, and ordered themselves dozens of the new iPhone 3GS’s. lol
I wonder how long this was going on for…? At 10 million dollars, didn’t they think to themselves, alright, that’s enough. We’re all set for life. It’s the greed! Nothing is ever enough.
zOmG zOmG zoMG, dId NE1s fOne gEt STolEN hERe :-/
I wondered where Galvatron had gone. Now i know he is modeling for BG pics.
Def. a down fall of gsm, think lost insurance claim, as well as the above posters perspective, using customer info. but the customer doesn’t realize they filed a claim. Think large accounts as well that wouldn’t notice the $50 charge. Sketchy ass dealers give those that run a good business a bad name…
Lol at the Galvatron comment
lol…. number one rule of committing fraud… never use the same identity twice…
the article’s not completely accurate. The guys were activating accounts with 2 and 3 lines and using t-mobile’s installment plan to get like 3 g1s for like $130 or so. They hit both my stores
i know how there doing it, tmobile is the easiest to scam, att is a little harder. When tmobile runs credit the name doesnt have to match the social, so when someone goes into these shops they keep there social, then hit up all the indirect stores with the customer soical, and just provide a different picture id. They will go around activating accounts and then once they activate the accounts, go into the tmobile system look up the accounts they just created, and get the dealers id code, then call customer care and deact the service, free phones! my store got hit with 26,000 in charges backs cause of this!
Why would those dopes risk criminal charges for an iPhone? A blackberry I can understand
If AT&T in NY dealer all of a sudden sold an extra 22million in hardware without thinking something is wrong then they deserved it! 22 million dollars in hardware is ALOT of phones!
hahaha good. love when ppl outsmart the system