Thought my $50 used phone was a steal... until the seller's remote wipe went wrong

Bought a Galaxy S20 off Facebook Marketplace from a guy in Austin last week. He did a factory reset right in front of me, seemed legit. Got home, set it up, everything worked fine for like 4 hours. Then the screen goes black and a corporate MDM lock screen pops up. Turns out he was a reseller who didn't check the IMEI history. Now I'm stuck with a brick and the seller blocked me. Anyone else run into phantom MDM locks on phones that looked clean?

2 comments

2 Comments

samward10d ago

Wait, did you check if the MDM lock was actually tied to a Samsung account instead of the company's server? A lot of times those "phantom" locks are just leftover Knox enrollment data that can be cleared with a simple ODIN flash. Might save you from having to toss the phone entirely if you haven't tried it yet.

skylerm5510d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, you're totally right! I've actually been through this exact thing myself with a Galaxy Tab A7 that was stuck in some weird Knox limbo. It drove me nuts for weeks until I finally tried the ODIN flash method and it cleared right up, no issues since. In my experience, companies use Samsung's built-in Knox enrollment so sloppily that it leaves behind all kinds of junk data that behaves like a lock but isn't really. Your mileage may vary of course, but I'd definitely give that a shot before tossing the phone, it's saved me a few times now.