Because of the boom in the market for cell phones especially the prepaid ones, the need to fulfill this demand has made some people go beyond the normal ways of providing them one. In fact, people are even seen to pay more for these cell phones that are usually available in the international black market, thinking that they have gotten a good deal with it, only to find out that they paid more.

A suit filed by AT&T Mobility , one of the top network and cellular phone providers in the US, in the federal courts of Texas alleges that their Go Phones are purchased by the bulk by a group of people for resale locally and internationally, usually in the countries in Asia, Middle East and Latin America. This violates the laws and statutes on trademark.

Prepaid cell phones are the easiest to use since they do not have a fixed contract with any provider, therefore enabling people with a bit of knowledge on the hardware of the cell phone to unlock it for use on any network of their choice. To procure those prepaid cell pones, they scour the internet to get recruits or runners who will buy prepaid cell phones in volume from retail cell phone outlets until they have amassed a sizable amount.

These prepaid cell phones will be tampered with and then sold on the international black market for a higher price, telling their prospective customers that these cell phones are capable of working in any other network.

This practice is considered to be a subsidy theft which was first thought to be a problem exclusively seen with Tracfone Wireless Inc, a vendor of prepaid wireless phones. However, several telecommunications companies have also filed suits similar to this in certain parts of the country, namely Virgin Mobile USA Inc, T-Mobile USA Inc, and Nokia Corporation.

AT&T Mobility is seen to be the biggest cell phone corporation to fight with regards to the prepaid cell phone trafficking that is now happening and getting out of hand. AT&T has filed the suit against Wireless Exclusive USA LLC, which is a firm in Texas that deals with the sale of prepaid cell phones that are thought to be tampered with. Unfortunately, they could not be reached for any comments at the moment.

To be able to put a stop on this practice, several policies have been executed by the exclusive retailers of AT&T to limit how many GoPhones a single individual can buy. Unfortunately, the defendants have found a way around this policy, by hiring a bigger amount of runners to purchase the GoPhones, thus accumulating a bigger number of prepaid cell phones to sell, losing AT&T Mobility millions in sales.

AT&T is being represented by several attorneys in this suit, including James Baldinger, an expert lawyer in the field of cell phone hacking, who handled several cases on hacking with Tracfone. He presently belongs to the Carlton Fields law firm that is based in Florida. On this lawsuit, he is teaming up with the federal agents to get to the bottom of the case.