AT&T Mobility accuses three former sales reps of scheming to unlock phones

“Locking” phones into a single carrier allows service providers like Verizon, AT&T or Sprint to guarantee that their customers will stay for the duration of their contract (or at least force them to pay off the cost of the phone if they should break said contract).

We like to (deservedly) give AT&T a lot of grief around here, but it looks like they have a case in their latest lawsuit. It’s legal for consumers to unlock their very own telephones or to pay somebody to unlock telephones for them. Lam was sacked by AT&T, while Sapatin and Evans both left the company.

The representatives used malicious software running on the employee computers in the AT&T store to automatically request unlocks. Not only can the unlocked device move between carriers, but it also raises the device worth if a consumer decides to resale.

AT&T’s suit says Swift Unlocks, based in Anaheim, Calif., was using employees inside AT&T’s customer service center in Bothell, Wash., to secretly obtain unlock codes for devices that were still under contract, which means the carrier had no obligation to release them to competing carriers. This unlocks target phones, making them usable even without an AT&T contract. The company first noticed the scheme when it saw a noticeable uptick in the number of unlock requests issued by two call-center employees, often within milliseconds of each other.

Schemes for unlocking devices in bulk are common, and the defendants have participated in such schemes, according AT&T’s lawyers. But, AT&T concedes that it doesn’t know the full extent of Swift Unlocks’ involvement. AT&T, however, is known to have the strictest rules of all major carriers for honoring the unlock requests.

The defendants have not yet filed a response with the court.

Things didn’t stop there, however, as Sapatin allegedly tried to bring other AT&T employees into the fold, with Sapatin telling one employee “that she would make $2,000 every two weeks through her participation in the Unlock Scheme”, wrote AT&T.

AT&T is in search of monetary damages in an quantity to be decided at trial, and injunctions stopping the defendants from persevering with the alleged exercise. “It’s important to note that this did not involve any improper access of customer information, or any adverse effect on our customers”.