Sprint employees charged in $15 million cell phone scam

Nine former Sprint employees have been charged with accessing thousands of customer accounts to make millions of dollars worth of illegal calls, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced.

The scammers, who worked in Sprint stores in New York, New Jersey and Florida, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft for their alleged roles in a $15 million cell phone cloning scheme.

According to the complaint, the defendants tapped into Sprint's computer network to steal confidential cell phone information from thousands of the carrier's customers. The nine defendants accessed customer accounts more than 16,000 times, using customer information to create "clones" of the customers' cell phones.