John Paul M. Joaquin Tech 12.19.2022 00:Dec AM EST

T-Mobile Hacker Gets 10-Year Sentence for Unlocking Phones

The verdict is in for a former T-Mobile retail store owner.

Argishti Khudaverdyan, the former owner in question, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for his phone unlocking scheme.

Authorities previously found Khudaverdyan guilty of the charges pressed against them in early August, with his sentencing hearing being scheduled for Dec. 5, per The Verge.

Argishti Khudaverdyan Sentence Details

The US Attorney's Office Central District of California mentioned in its statement that District Judge Stephen V. Wilson sentenced Khudaverdyan to spend ten years in federal prison for his multimillion phone unlock/unblock scheme.

Wilson also ordered Khudaverdyan to pay the sum of $28,473,535 in restitution to T-Mobile, the aggrieved party in the case.

According to a previous statement, once 44-year-old T-Mobile store owner was found guilty of one count of conspiracy t commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and two counts of accessing a computer to defraud and obtain value.

He also was found guilty of one count of intentionally accessing a computer without authorization to obtain information, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, five counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Khudaverdyan previously ran his phone unlocking/unblocking scheme to allow people to either bypass carrier contracts and switch carriers, or to use lost or stolen phones, generating around $25 million in illegal proceeds.

The Central District also added that the unlocked phones were also being sold on the black market.

For those unaware, a carrier "locks" a phone to prevent a user from switching to another carrier while their contract is unfulfilled. Meanwhile, carriers "block" a phone if they were reported to be lost or stolen. They do so to prevent anyone other than the owner from using it.

Khudaverdyan was able to conduct his illegal scheme behind the scenes from Aug. 2014 to June 2019, severely affecting T-Mobile's business in the process.

Authorities arrested Khudaverdyan on June 10, 2019, but were not found guilty until Aug. 1, 2022.

How Did Khudaverdyan Do It?

To unlock or unblock a phone, Khudaverdyan needed to access (or hack, in this case) the company's internal computer systems and unlock/unblock phones from there.

He was able to do so by getting 50 employees' credentials through phishing campaigns and socially engineering the company's IT Help Desk.

Khudaverdyan used to own Top Tier Solutions Inc., a T-Mobile store in Eagle Rock Plaza, with a business partner from Jan. 2017 to June 2017.

T-Mobile previously caught Khudaverdyan red-handed due to suspicious computer behavior and association with the unauthorized unlocking of cell phones and subsequently terminated their contract.

Khudaverdyan was caught due to his use of his own T-Mobile credentials to log into a T-Mobile WiFi access point from Texas and access "unlockitall.com."

Despite this termination, Khudaverdyan continued his fraud and illegal scheme.

Using the credentials he stole, Khudaverdyan and his partner unlocked/blocked hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS devices using T-Mobile's dedicated Mobile Device Unlock (MDU) and MCare Unlock tools.