NEW YORK, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- New York City prosecutors charged 12 people in a $250 million cellphone account cloning scam.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said "tens of thousands" of customer accounts were stolen and used in the black market international calling scam, New York Daily News reported.
The suspects allegedly used customer phone numbers and code numbers associated with the accounts to make cloned cellphones appear to be legitimate to service providers, Bharara said.
Hardware from a Chinese company allowed the suspects to route international calls made with the illegal phones through the Internet at cheap rates, Bharara said.
Bharara said five of the suspects have were arrested Wednesday, while the rest remain at large.
The investigation came out of a similar investigation by U.S. Secret Service agents that led to the arrest of nine Sprint employees who stole and sold customer information to clone scammers in 2010.
