Former T-Mobile Store Owner Gets 10 Years for Phone Fraud

A former T-Mobile retail store owner was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for stealing T-Mobile employee credentials and illegally accessing the carrier’s internal computer systems to illicitly unlock and unblock cellphones, said the DOJ Monday. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California also ordered Argishti Khudaverdyan of Burbank, California, to pay $28.47 million in restitution, the DOJ said. From August 2014 to June 2019, Khudaverdyan fraudulently unlocked and unblocked cellphones on T-Mobile’s network, plus Sprint, AT&T and other networks, DOJ said, allowing the phones to be sold on the black market. Removing the lock allowed T-Mobile customers to stop using the carrier’s services and deprive the company of revenue generated from customer service contracts and equipment installment plans. T-Mobile terminated Khudaverdyan’s contract in June 2017 based on his “suspicious computer behavior and association with unauthorized unlocking of cellphones,” but he continued his fraud, DOJ said. A federal jury found Khudaverdyan guilty of 14 felonies, including fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and aggravated identity theft. A co-defendant, Alen Gharehbagloo of La Canada Flintridge, California, a former co-owner of Top Tier Solutions, pleaded guilty July 5 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, accessing a protected computer with intent to defraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering; his sentencing hearing is slated for Feb. 13.