[Trident]

Here is a description of the law that is broken- taken from the FCC website:
Cellular fraud is defined as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or service. Cellular industry estimates indicate that carriers lose more than $150 million per year to cellular fraud, with the principal cause being subscription fraud. Subscriber fraud occurs when a subscriber signs up for service with fraudulently obtained customer information or false identification.

In the past, cloning of cellular phones was a major concern. A cloned cellular telephone is one that has been reprogrammed to transmit the electronic serial number (ESN) and telephone number (MIN) belonging to another (legitimate) cellular telephone. Unscrupulous persons obtain valid ESN/MIN combinations by illegally monitoring the transmissions from the cellular telephones of legitimate subscribers. Each cellular telephone is supposed to have a unique factory-set ESN. After cloning, however, because both cellular telephones then have the same ESN/MIN combination, cellular systems cannot distinguish the cloned cellular telephone from the legitimate one.



In an Order, the Commission adopted a rule (22.919) requiring that all cellular telephones for which type acceptance is sought after January 1, 1995 must be designed such that the factory set ESN can not be reprogrammed. At the same time, the Commission stated that it considers any knowing use of cellular telephone with an altered ESN to be a violation of the Communications Act (Section 301) and alteration of the ESN in a cellular telephone to be assisting in such violation. The Wireless Telephone Protection Act (Public Law 105-172) was signed into law on April 24, 1998, expanding the prior law to criminalize the use, possession, manufacture or sale of cloning hardware or software.

The cellular equipment manufacturing industry has deployed authentication systems that have proven to be a very effective countermeasure to cloning. Authentication supplements the use of the ESN and MIN with a changing encrypted code that can not be obtained by off-the-air monitoring.

And here is part of a statute that describes the penalty:
With respect to cellular phone cloning, the Act makes clear that a person convicted of such an offense without a prior section 1029 conviction is subject to a statutory maximum of 15 years; a person convicted of such an offense after a prior section 1029 conviction is subject to a statutory maximum of 20 years.

I hope that's good enough.