These phones are usually locked, so customers won’t be able to jump ship to another carrier without fully paying for the phone or by finishing their contract.

The unlocking of smartphones has been a hotly debated issue as the Federal Communications Commission has introduced new rules over the past few years.

Consumers are legally allowed to request that their carrier unlock their phones – once they’ve been paid off in full – so that the phone can then be connected to a competing carrier’s network.

AT&T has filed a lawsuit against 3 former call center employees, accusing them of installing malware on their servers with the objective of aiding a phone unlocking service to obtain AT&T unlock codes.

The exception to that are services that unlock phones for you, like Swift Unlocks. What makes unlocking a device so desirable is the freedom consumers receive with the device.

The defendants have not yet filed a response with the court.

As mentioned, Swift Unlock was supposedly looking for specific codes that only could be accessed by AT&T employees. Employees didn’t even need to set the malware bug up, instead all they were coaxed in doing was to click a link that was sent to them. According the the lawsuit, the reps were paid $2000 every two weeks for their cooperation (netting between $10,500 and $20,000 before the scam was discovered) and Swift Unlocks gained access to “hundreds of thousands” of unlock codes.

The “defendants perpetuated the Unlock Scheme by creating, distributing, and placing on AT&T’s computer systems a “malware” program designed to fraudulently, and without authorization, transmit unlock requests that unlocked hundreds of thousands of phones from exclusive use on AT&T’s network”, AT&T claimed. Allegedly two employees out of fifty suspected in the scheme have already been paid over $10,000 just for installing the malware bug. The alleged scheme is similar to others “in which illegal operators buy or steal large quantities of phones (prepaid or with term contracts), unlock them, and resell them in foreign markets that do not subsidize the devices”, AT&T wrote.

No one accused in the suit still works for AT&T, but swiftunlocks.com was still live as of Friday morning.

The AT&T’s complaint quotes Sapatin as saying “that there were many people across the country participating in the Unlock Scheme and others like it against different wireless carriers”.

There are several websites that offer the services Swift Unlock features, but Swift Unlock is the one under fire.

On the FAQ portion of the site, the company tells its customers that using its service it’s legal.