Remember you need an outlet, car and gas expenses finding cell phones. If there ever was way to lose money, this has got to be it. Unless the buyers pay a premium with the intent of using phones illegally.
Being born here doesn't always wash, look at what's going on in England.
Actually see post #15. If that is accurate they could actually make a pretty good living.
Along Harry Hines Boulevard, three men arrested in Michigan last week weren't known as potential terrorists. To shop owners there, they were seen as ambitious young businessmen.
"They seemed like good guys, young, hard-working," said Jalal Charanya, owner of Wireless Way, which sells prepaid cellphones. "There are many guys selling these kinds of phones ... but they were probably my biggest supplier."
Louai Othman, Adham Othman and Maruan Muhareb have been cleared of terrorism allegations. However, they were charged Wednesday with fraud and money laundering in connection with their mass purchases and sales of cellphones.
They were known to sell as many as 200 cellphones at a time to Dallas businesses. Such commerce was not unusual for businessmen such as Mr. Charanya who are looking to buy cellphones for resale.
The trio is among a group of entrepreneurs who buy prepaid phones in stores and then resell them – some for use in the United States, others to be exported, stripped down, repackaged and resold for profit in places such as Hong Kong and other foreign markets.
The participants say the enterprise is legal. But federal officials in Detroit charged the Texas trio with fraud Wednesday. The officials allege that the men's practices were damaging the phone companies and misleading the consumers who eventually buy the phones.
Mr. Charanya said he does business with between 30 and 100 men in the area who buy discounted prepaid phones at places such as Wal-Mart and Target and then resell them to him for about $5 profit per device.
In turn, Mr. Charanya and other businesses unload the cellphones in bulk, either to other suppliers in Los Angeles, New York, or Miami, and occasionally overseas. He said the strongest international demand for prepaid cellphones is in Hong Kong.
There are at least a dozen businesses in Dallas and hundreds across the country that turn a profit on discounted prepaid cellphones. At each stop in the chain, from the original buyer, to the wholesaler, to the overseas merchant, the price of the cellphones increases.
So a discounted handset sold at Family Dollar in Dallas for $29.99 may eventually sell for more than $100 in Asia or the Middle East.
"All these phones are headed overseas," said Sean Mobh, manager of Wireless Wholesale Stop on Harry Hines Boulevard. "Nokia knows this is going on, Wal-Mart knows this is going on, there's no secret. Nobody says anything because everybody's making a few bucks' profit on these phones."
Many of the phones in the trio's possession were Nokia phones packaged by wireless phone company TracFone and sold by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.