For a $25 million scheme in which he hacked into T-Mobile’s internal systems to unlock and unblock cellphones, Argishti Khudaverdyan, the former owner of a T-Mobile retail store, was given a ten-year prison sentence.
Between August 2014 and June 2019, the 44-year-elderly person behind the plan, who was additionally requested to pay $28,473,535 in compensation, “cleaned” countless cellphones for his “clients.”
Khudaverdyan’s agreement as the proprietor of the Top Level Arrangements T-Portable retail location in California was ended by the remote transporter in June 2017 because of his dubious PC conduct and relationship with unapproved opening of cellphones.
The Department of Justice stated in a press release that “Khudaverdyan fraudulently unlocked and unblocked cellphones on T-Mobile’s network, as well as the networks of Sprint, AT&T, and other carriers” from August 2014 to June 2019.
“Removing the unlock enabled the phones to be sold on the black market, enabled T-Mobile customers to discontinue using T-Mobile’s services, and deprived T-Mobile of revenue generated from customers’ service contracts and equipment installment plans,” reads the statement.
Khudaverdyan and co-defendant Alen Gharehbagloo, his former business partner and co-owner of the mobile store, used credentials stolen in phishing attacks from more than fifty T-Mobile employees to gain access to T-Mobile’s internal computer systems.
T-Mobile’s internal computer systems were accessed with the stolen credentials, and in many instances, password resets that locked account holders out of the system were performed using the reset credentials.
In an August press release after Khudaverdyan was found guilty, the US Department of Justice stated, “Working with others in overseas call centers, Khudaverdyan also received T-Mobile employee credentials, which he then used to access T-Mobile systems to target higher-level employees by harvesting those employees’ personal identifying information and calling the T-Mobile IT Help Desk to reset the employees’ company passwords, giving him unauthorized access to the T-Mobile systems which allowed him to unlock and
They used emails and specialized websites like unlocks247.com, swiftunlocked.com, unlockitall.com, tryunlock.com, and unlockedlocked.com to promote their “direct premium unlocking services for all phone carriers” to potential customers throughout the scheme.
The two men used T-Mobile’s specialized Mobile Device Unlock (MDU) and MCare Unlock (MCare) tools to unlock hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS devices with the stolen credentials and IMEI numbers sent by customers through the websites they controlled.
MCare was based on IP address blocks assigned to T-Mobile/Metro locations and did not require authentication, whereas the MDU tool could only be used by authorized T-Mobile employees.
On at least one occasion, on March 29, 2017, the defendant used his own T-Mobile credential (akhudav1) to access the unlockitall.com website from a T-Mobile Wi-Fi access point in Texas, thereby directly affiliating himself with the illegal cellphone unlock scheme.
According to the superseding indictment, Khudaverdyan told one potential customer in an email advertising his services, “We can perform convenient, factory-grade unlocks on all iPhone and iPad devices that have been iCloud locked without voiding your phone’s warranty”
“Our specialty is offering competitive iCloud unlocking services and Clean/Financed T-Mobile iPhone services. We’ve been unlocking phones for years.”
“Our T-mobile unlock is official and directly through Apple and T-Mobile, unlike other companies that use “hacking unlock” with the possibility of relocking your iPhone in the future.”
On July 5, he also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, accessing a protected computer with the intent to defraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Alen Gharehbagloo is his former business partner and the co-owner of the mobile store.
The sentencing hearing for Gharehbagloo is scheduled for February 23, 2023, which is two months away.
