won a suit against a prepaid phone trafficker, T-Mobile has obtained final judgments and injunctions against two companies and an individual. T-Mobile will also receive $6.5 million in damages from the entities, which include Fone Xchange and ASPAC Inc. The deal with prepaid phone trafficking, as we’ve discussed here previously, is that companies go in and purchase a large number of prepaid phone packs. These include discounted phones. It’s the same principle of subsidizing postpaid phones. Companies discount the phone in hopes that you purchase minutes which will help them recoup the cost. With traffickers, they’re buying and unlocking the phones, selling them for a profit. Since the minutes eventually bought by customers aren’t necessarily that of the originating carrier, they stand to lose a substantial amount of money.
“T-Mobile is committed to protecting consumers and our company by shutting down these traffickers,” said Doug Chartier, vice president, retail partner sales, T-Mobile USA. “We are pleased by the result in these cases, and expect similar successes in our other pending and planned lawsuits.”It seems that these types of cases won’t be going away anytime soon.]]>