Feds charge 12 people for stealing cell-phone info in $250M cloning scheme

dozen people were charged Wednesday in a $250 million scam in which New York-area cell phone customer accounts were pilfered to clone cell phones.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said “tens of thousands” of customer accounts were stolen and used in the lucrative black market international calling scheme.

The crackdown stems from a investigation by U.S. Secret Service agents that led to the arrest in 2010 of nine Sprint employees who stole and sold customer information to clone scammers.

Bharara said the suspects used customer phone numbers and associated codes to make cloned cell phones appear to be legitimate to service providers.

Special computer hardware obtained from a Chinese company allowed the suspects to route international calls made with the illegal phones through the Internet at cheap rates.

Bharara said the scam dates back to at least 2009.

Five of the suspects named in the complaint unsealed in White Plains Federal Court Wednesday have been arrested. The rest remain at large, Bharara said.