[Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2, 10.1, 8.4 Q&A, Help & Trouble] studentoflife:
Edit 3: USIC, after further investigation, has confirmed the tablet was actually one lost in shipment and compensated for by insurance, the sale was legitimate (not a stolen device) and they unenrolled it from KNOX before I could ask if they would do so. So, overall a satisfactory outcome, even if the tech part of me wanted to find a way to defeat a technical challenge.

EDIT 2: The device may not be stolen after all, seller has given a plausible explanation. Withholding further judgement until more information comes in.

EDIT: I was originally thinking of 'USIC' as a subsystem of Android or KNOX. A user on Reddit suggested I reach out to the company USIC and see if the tablet was stolen from them. I did. It was. Will be getting the tablet back into their hands and pursuing a refund from the eBay seller. Will leave this post up in case anyone has a use for the technical rabbit hole I went down.

Backstory: Found a good deal on a new Galaxy Tab Active Pro from an IT liquidator company on eBay, it was listed as locked and price reduced because of that. I thought along the lines of 'hardware access is total access' and figured I would be able to wipe / reset it.

Device arrived today, the crippleware (MDM or administration software actually, but I'm feeling ornery at it) installed is Soti Mobicontrol. I can boot into the OS but a bunch of stuff is disabled. First I initiated a factory reset from Settings - it resets and during setup lists "This tablet is protected by Knox Cloud Service. To continue setup, connect to a Wi-Fi or mobile network." From there it states "Your admin can monitor and manage settings".... a bunch of stuff ending with "USIC will manage and monitor this device using the following app: MobiControl" with the only option being 'Accept & continue'.

Tried another factory reset through the boot menu (hold down vol down and power to reboot followed by hold down vol up) - same result.

Found and downloaded the same version firmware the tablet currently has: SM-T540_XAR_T540XXU2BTG5_fac.zip where XAR appears to be the US/Canada region code and T540XXU2BTG5 is the exact version of firmware the tablet currently has installed (verified by going to 'Software information' in settings).

Downloaded latest version of Odin (3.13), booted the tablet into the correct mode and flashed clean firmware (just the AP firmware) to the device. Went through first install sequence to no change in behavior, still installs Soti Mobicontrol as a device admin.

I've looked into maybe getting TWRP installed (so I can delete KNOX from TWRP file browser perhaps as demonstrated here:

) but as far as I can tell there isn't a build for this version of the tablet - closest I can get is for the SM-T547 XDA forum post on it here: https://xdaforums.com/t/recovery-unofficial-twrp-for-galaxy-tab-active-pro-10-1-snapdragon.4284347/. Also not sure how I would get it installed since I can't enter dev options in the tablet (tapping on Build number, even in safe mode, results in a popup: Action not allowed This action is disabled by MobiControl. Contact your organization's administrator to learn more.)

I've found someone on YouTube (

) who removed the software just by intentionally entering a wrong password until a factory reset tripped - but I am already able to use the factory reset option and the software comes back. I'm thinking Soti Mobicontrol and the KNOX service are separate issues and in this person's example he was only dealing with Soti and not KNOX Enrollment.

Next I found this gentleman on Youtube:

who specifically mentions using the 'Nand erase' option in Odin along with flashing all files in the stock firmware to remove management software. Tried that, no luck. Same as each install I get the message 'Updating... Updating Knox Enrollment Service... X%' after being required to connect to wifi to continue setup with the 'Skip' option greyed out.

So, that's where I am right now with it, and I refuse to give up. Ideas?