Is Amazon selling stolen iPhones?

If you got that shiny new iPhone 5 for Christmas, be careful. It may be stolen. Even if it was bought from Amazon.

Twitter user Ben Dreyfuss bought his mom a refurbished iPhone from Amazon for Christmas, and when they called Verizon to activate it, Verizon support informed the pair that the phone was stolen. Yeah, merry Christmas. That situation stinks. Dreyfuss said he purchased the phone through one of Amazon’s refurbished warehouse deals. He says the Verizon representative didn’t quite believe the phone was purchased through Amazon, and questioned if Dreyfuss actually bought the phone through eBay. Amazon was apologetic about the whole thing though other than have the Dreyfuss family return the phone and order a new one that hopefully wasn’t stolen.

Luckily Amazon has great customer service. Hopefully this didn’t happen to many people.