FLICKR/GSBROWN99
APPLE
PICKING
AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint
and T-Mobile agreed to join forces
and share a list of serial numbers
linked to stolen phones. Once the
policy goes into effect by the end
of this year, a phone reported stolen will no longer work on any
major U.S. wireless network.
“With the press of a button,
carriers will be able to disable
phones and turn highly prized
stolen property into worthless
chunks of plastic,” New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said
when the stolen phone blacklist
was announced last year.
But in the meantime, phone
thefts have not stopped. If anything, they have become more
brazen. Last month, masked men
robbed an AT&T store in Hamilton, N.J., at gunpoint and made
off with $15,000 worth of new
iPhones, the latest in a string of
recent armed robberies at smartphone retailers.
And thieves are finding new
ways to get paid. Lanier said
some filched phones have been
dropped in recycling machines
manufactured by a company called
ecoATM. Customers who recycle
old phones in ecoATM’s machines
— which resemble bank ATMs —
receive as much as $300 for each
HUFFINGTON
03.24.13
one, depending on their value on
the global market.
Ryan Kuder, a spokesman for
ecoATM, said the company has
installed more than 300 recycling
machines at shopping malls in 23
states, including several outside
New York City and Washington,
D.C., and collected “hundreds of
thousands” of used phones last
year. About 60 percent were re-
EcoATM
machines
dispense cash
for old phones,
and are a
frequent dropoff point for
stolen phones.