Man Hacked T-Mobile Employees to Unlock Cell Phones, Rake in $25 Million
A California man has been found guilty(Opens in a new window) of hacking into T-Mobile systems to unlock cell phones from the mobile carrier, which he turned into a multi-million-dollar business.
Argishti Khudaverdyan, 44, originally owned a T-Mobile store in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles. According to prosecutors, Khudaverdyan used the unauthorized T-Mobile access to rake in $25 million in illegal proceeds from customers looking for ways to unlock their phones.
The scheme targeted how T-Mobile can lock smartphones to the company’s wireless network, preventing subscribers from switching their devices to another provider before their contracts are up. The cell phone locking can also stop a customer on contract from absconding with the hardware and reselling it for a profit.
Khudaverdyan decided to offer a phone-unlocking service to customers for a fee. To do so, he sent phishing emails to T-Mobile employees with access to the company’s internal systems that were designed to trick them into giving up their login credentials.
The business led Khudaverdyan to unlock hundreds of thousands of cell phones, including Apple iPhones, during the scheme, which lasted from 2014 until 2019, according to federal investigators. The service also "unblocked" phones that had been reported lost or stolen.
Khudaverdyan promoted his unlocking services through brokers, email solicitations, and websites such as unlocks247.com, swiftunlocked.com, and unlockitall.com, according(Opens in a new window) to court documents. In addition, he falsely claimed the unlocking service officially came from T-Mobile, the Justice Department said.
Khudaverdyan and an associate also used their official T-Mobile logins to access the company’s IT
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