New Angle, Cell Phone Trafficking
Cell phone traffickers have found a new way to make money. They have found that by purchasing the cheap prepaid phones and tweaking the software, the phones can be used to make calls on any network. After they are unlocked, the phones are then sold all over the world.
These phones are bought in retail stores all over in California, Georgia, New York and many other states. Dozens of people have been hired to be runners for the traffickers. They go into the retail stores and buy up the prepaid phones at a cheap price. The phones are then hacked into and resold at $40 to $60 over the original price. Hacking into the phones and reconfiguring the software is not illegal. This does pose a problem for the cell phone companies however, who are losing revenue by not selling additional minutes. The phones are sold in retail stores sometimes at a loss for the phone company, because they count on making up for it in the new additional minutes they would be selling for the same phone. This is how the prepaid cell phone company makes its profit. More related technology articles may be found at Merlins News Blog Trac Fone Wireless, along with other makers of these phones are suing the cell phone traffickers in federal courts all around the U.S. Trac Fone and other companies such as Virgin Mobile and AT&T, contend that Federal Law protects their copyrighted software and trademarks. However, there is a company called Incomtel that feels it is perfectly legal to unlock these phones so they work on any cellular system. They have filed suit against Tac Fone, arguing that Trac Fone buys their phones from Nokia and Motorola. Nokia and Motorola use their own software. They contend that Trac Fone has no right to lock the software so others cannot use them and anyone should be able to purchase these phones for use on any network.