[Samsung Galaxy S8+ Questions & Answers] Starhound:
Ok so this is going to be a long one... sorry in advance if I've broken any site rules posting here (made an account so I could make this post).

First, I work retail loss prevention for an off-brand retailer (in the USA). About 3 months ago we found a T-Mobile s8+ in one of our fitting rooms. The phone was turned into me via one of the store employees where I let it sit in my office for 3 days while turned on, hoping someone who knows the original owner would call it. No one called, so I took the phone to my local T-Mobile store to turn it in or see if they could contact the owner. The T-Mobile representative told me that they would be unable to take the phone from me, or give me any information regarding the owner. So the phone sat in my stores Lost and Found box for 30 days as policy. Once those 30 days passed our policy states to throw out the phone with the normal trash. Being an expensive phone, and the technology lover I am, I kept the phone

which I had all legal right to do

since the store had thrown it out.

The phone itself had a pin-lock and probably some sensitive data regarding the previous owner which I was able to clear out via a re-flash of the OS on the phone (i'm not a bad guy I didn't want their personal data).

So, obviously, the phone itself has an IMEI number reported as "Lost" with T-Mobile. Which means I'm basically unable to use it on our carrier (Metro PCS), however my wife was using it for the camera and other apps while at the house.

Flash forward another month and my wife's phone begins to start acting up so I figured there could be some way to work out to let her use this s8+ (I own a normal s8 myself and have no real use for the s8+). So i called T-Mobile customer support, explained the situation described above, and they told me I would need to take the phone to a Samsung store to have the device refurbished? Well, I drove about 30 minutes out to the nearest Samsung store to be told they don't perform such a service.

So I decided to look into altering the IMEI# of the s8+ to a clean IMEI of my wife's current phone or an older one we no longer use, and all the laws and specifications regarding what can and can't be done. All I could dig up regarding IMEI laws in the US was here: congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/3186/text/is -- Which isn't actually a law it's a proposed bill that never got passed. I did find some stuff from the FCC about cell phone cloning fraud:fcc.gov/consumers/guides/cell-phone-fraud -- but this also doesn't exactly fit my situation since we only want to use one phone, not two under the same identifications. There also is the concern of 'is it really fraud if I own both phones in question?'.

So this brings us to the current status: I have this phone that I obtained legally with a bad IMEI and cannot use it for everyday purposes.

Any help on how we can get the phone to a usable state would be greatly appreciated.

[Edit update]: I realize this is a very unusual situation, and am fully aware of the stigma regarding asking what to do regarding bad IMEI numbers and just want to clarify that I do not intend to break any laws or act with malicious intent to others. I simply want to have a phone, which I own legally, working.