PREVIOUS PAGE FROM TOP: STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL; COURTESY OF SPRINT
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Before a federal SWAT team descended last summer, one storefront in a Detroit suburb attracted
so many people bearing shopping
bags stuffed with iPhones and
iPads that managers installed a
port-a-potty on the sidewalk.
Once inside, people deposited
their electronic wares into a rotating drawer below a bulletproof
glass window and waited for the
cashier to deliver stacks of cash.
So much money changed hands
in this fashion at the Ace Wholesale
storefront in Taylor, Mich., that an
armored truck arrived each morning to deliver fresh bundles of cash,
according to an undercover investigator for the wireless company
Sprint and an employee at the Mattress World outlet next door.
“It was like Fort Knox over
there,” said the Mattress World
employee, who asked not to be
named for fear of making enemies
inside what police say was a locus
of criminal activity.
Many of the mobile devices
swapped for cash at Ace Wholesale had been stolen at gunpoint
in an escalating wave of gadgetrelated robberies, police say. Ace
Wholesale had become a key broker in the underground trade of
stolen phones, a global enterprise
that often connects violent street
thieves in American cities with
buyers as far away as Hong Kong,
according to law enforcement and
the wireless industry.
“These companies fence the
stolen phones for them, no questions asked,” said Jerry Deaven,
an agent with the Department
of Homeland Security, which is
tasked with preventing the trafficking of stolen goods. “You can
walk right into one of these storefronts and sell all the phones at
once and walk out with $20,000.”
Deaven told The Huffington
You can walk right into one of
these storefronts … and walk
out with $20,000.
Post that such traffickers are responsible for “a tremendous
amount of phones being shipped
out of the country,” adding that
“some organizations are shipping
a couple million dollars worth of
phones per month.”