Cell phone companies scramble to halt trafficking

For less than $15, you can buy a cell phone loaded with minutes. You can buy more as you go whenever those minutes run out. Best of all, you aren't locked into a long-term contract. But in South Florida, New York, California, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, traffickers have figured out they can make big profits by purchasing thousands of these low-cost phones and tweaking the software so that calls can be made on any cell network. The altered phones are then sold all over the world -- costing the phone companies tens of millions of dollars. Some traffickers employ dozens of people full-time as "runners" to buy the phones at retail stores so they can later be hacked into and resold. The problem for the phone companies is that they often sell the phones at a loss, instead making their money when customers have to buy additional minutes from them -- a guaranteed profit once the phone is sold. But the phone companies have no guarantee that customers will buy minutes from them after the phones are hacked or shipped to a far-off country. It's technically not illegal to unlock the software on your personal cell phone -- but the companies are hoping to put a stop to traffickers that they say are siphoning away profits. Led by Miami-based TracFone Wireless Inc., makers of the low-cost prepaid cell phones are suing traffickers in federal courts around the country.