The Apple store in Booragoon (Perth WA) was broken into Tuesday night, after the thieves failed attempt to burgle the Perth City store. They made off with over $300,000 worth of mostly iPhones, and other devices. One would imagine that Apple can now block the stolen device serials in their activation system, essentially bricking them, making them useless and basically worthless, so what's the point? https://www.watoday.com.au/national...eft-rampage-across-perth-20190903-p52nlx.html
I dont know about iCloud but the nand chip holding the serial and IMEI can be de soldered and swapped with a broken phone or reprogrammed The device can also be used in a country that dosnt participate with the global IMEI network lock thingie but again iCloud may still be a problem if they havnt found a way Or load Android on it and sell it for a discount in Africa or China Or most likely, just sell/send them to the phone chop shop
They will likely sell them to unsuspecting people on ebay/gummy/FB. I'll bet they won't give refunds if the imei's are blocked somehow. This is the risk of buying a brand new iphone or whatever. The people selling them have usually either stolen them, or committed telco fraud to obtain them. There was a dodgey store on the GC selling Samsung phones that were telstra branded.... wonder how they got them at a low enough price to sell for 60% of retail.
theres a few facebook marketplace people selling iphone X/XS brand new unopened for cheaper than second hand but wont accept paypal/credit card so watch out
stolen credit card/fake ID/stolen identity. Its a massive , sauce : work for a telco. EDIT I should elaborate.... perp enters "hello, I work for xxx company, and we need 14 new iphones" . They bank on the salesman being an idiot, and most are unfortunately, they are under such pressure to make the quota for contracts they jump at it. I've seen them get patted on the back for their efforts!! perp then goes to the next telco and does the same.
