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Sprint employee accused of stealing phones, selling them on eBay: Sprint employee allegedly stole phones, sold them onlineAug 04, 2010 (Pioneer Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- If you were cruising eBay for a good deal on a telephone, it was hard to beat the seller known as "Cellerific." He had new phones, great prices and fast service. "Great seller! Excellent product! Would do business again!!" gushed "nsjentinc" last September after picking up a new BlackBerry Tour for $409, several hundred dollars less than what they normally cost. "Wonderful! Easy and quick to deal with!" exclaimed "alfmando" after getting a new Palm Treo Pro for $219 -- again, far less than what they'd cost at a store. But federal prosecutors in Minneapolis claim that Cellerific, whom they know as Christopher Keith Destasio, was selling telephones he took through his job at Sprint Nextel Corp., the wireless telecommunications company. He managed the accounts of several businesses and allegedly charged the companies for the phones. But he'd discount them so deeply -- often for less than $1 per phone -- that the companies never raised a fuss. The companies never got the phones, though. They were sent to Destasio's Minneapolis home, where he put them for sale on eBay, according to a criminal information filed Monday. Sprint Nextel claims it lost more than $145,000 in the alleged scheme. Federal officials declined to say how much money Destasio allegedly made from the sales, but the criminal charge says he sold 575 phones on eBay over a two-year period beginning in October 2007. Destasio, 42, could not be reached for comment. His attorney did not immediately return a call for comment. The single count of wire fraud against Destasio claims that beginning in October 2007, he engineered a scheme to defraud Sprint Nextel of the phones and then sell them to "numerous unwitting third parties" on eBay, the online auction site. "It was part of the scheme to defraud that defendant Destasio would order Sprint Nextel phones at very steep and unauthorized discounts, usually for 0.99 per phone, which he billed to certain of his Sprint Nextel customers, who generally ignored or failed to notice the charges because they were negligible," Assistant U.S. Attorney David MacLaughlin wrote in the charging document. The phones he ordered were known as "cold phones," meaning they didn't have numbers assigned to them yet. He sold them on eBay for prices ranging from $200 to $409. The wire fraud count stems from an Aug. 10, 2009, transaction in which a buyer deposited $409 in Destasio's PayPal account to pay for a Sprint BlackBerry. The charge says the alleged scheme cost Sprint Nextel $144,657.28 in losses. On eBay, buyers can give feedback rating the sellers and vice versa. A check of Cellerific's feedback from buyers showed they were generally happy, if not ecstatic, with their purchases. Of the 421 buyers who left feedback for Destasio between November 2004 and last Sept. 20 -- the last entry -- only two were negative. He was no shrinking violet when it came to protecting his eBay reputation, calling one griper a liar; the other one claimed he never got the product and Destasio replied by posting the Federal Express tracking number and the delivery date stamp. Even a buyer leaving a positive comment could be taken to task if Destasio didn't think the comment was positive enough. "Wow! Luv it fast and working like said! Will buy from again. Took 2 days," wrote "qfjanitorial" in July 2009 after buying a Palm Pre for $369.99. Replied Destasio: "Ordered at 8:30 p.m. on 6/19, shipped next day on 6/20, received on 6/21. 2 days???" The case is the second in the past year in Minnesota in which federal prosecutors have accused an employee of stealing from his employer and then selling the goods on eBay. In May, a federal judge sentenced a Little Falls man to two years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $294,000 in restitution after he was convicted of mail fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. A jury found that over a period of three years, David Earl Gregoire had taken hunting, fishing and camping gear from Reed's Family Outdoor Outfitters, where he'd worked off and on for nearly 20 years. David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516. To see more of the Pioneer Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.twincities.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544). |