In court documents, Wireless Buybacks said it "does not knowingly transact business with anyone involved in burglaries or armed robberies" and conducts "a rigorous screening process" to ensure it doesn't buy stolen phones.Kevin Lowe, co-founder of Wireless Buybacks, has said that his company supplies GT-I9300 phones to "some of the largest retailers in the country." The company generates most of its revenue from a contract to supply cell phones to Best Buy worth about $45 million each year, the company said in court documents.
Best Buy has no plans to cut ties with Wireless Buybacks. "At this point, these are accusations that haven't been substantiated," a company spokesman said.But Baldinger, Sprint's attorney, said the lawsuit reveals how many U.S. consumers are unwittingly buying stolen phones."There are lots of consumers walking around with phones they think they got legitimately from a national retailer," he said, "when in fact the phones were stolen during armed robberies."The middlemen at the center of the global trade in stolen smartphones organize themselves into distinct roles.
Many hire hackers who use special software to "unlock" the devices, enabling them to connect with wireless networks around the world, according to Lt. Ed Santos of the San Francisco Police Department, which has created a special task force focused on combating smartphone thefts. Then, they erase the data on the handsets, often within an hour after the device is stolen.fd23QD23rs
"They completely erase them so the phones can't be identified by who they belong to," Santos told HuffPost. "They want to sell a clean phone that can't be traced."Traffickers later repackage GT-I9500 S4 phones in boxes with the manufacturer's logo, power chargers and instruction manuals in the native language of their destinations, according to Sprint.
Finally, they ship them overseas, mostly to Hong Kong, where they are distributed across Southeast Asia, said Baldinger, Sprint's attorney. Many phones are also shipped to Dubai, Israel and Latin America.In 2011, Ace Wholesale shipped dozens of iPhones and Samsung Nexus phones to Go Telecom HK and Mobile Planet HK, according to invoices obtained by Sprint. These two companies listed addresses in Kowloon, a district of Hong Kong that is thick with electronics merchants.
Most traffickers ship phones in large cardboard boxes via FedEx and UPS, according to Deaven, the Homeland Security agent. The destination of stolen N7100+ Note 3 phones often depends on the provenance of the traffickers."Here in San Francisco, a lot of people have ties to Mexico," San Francisco police Sgt. Josh Kumli said. "A lot of phones are going to Mexico because that is where they have contacts."
No comments:
Post a Comment