[brownbat]

Last phone I bought from Walmart, T-Mobile refused to activate because they claimed it was stolen.

I was really taken aback to have purchased a device in a sealed box when someone had already cloned the IMEI. (Or maybe T-Mobile's setup is just really buggy...)

I was fortunately able to return it and get a new phone, worked fine.

But if I could fix that problem, maybe stolen phones will just get laundered through returns that way. (ie, buy a new phone, return the stolen one as defective).