Stealing phones for parts is only a “thing” because any U.S. carrier would still block a stolen IMEI. If you steal a car, for example, you can use it to for its primary purpose which is to drive. If you steal a phone, you can only sell it for parts.
yeah, used cars apparently mostly get exported to ghana and some other countries that have extremely loose customs who don't care about stolen goods moving in.
if you could re-use a phone, people would just factory reset the phone after stealing it, and people did it. then apple locked that down. then people started stripping the phone for parts instead, and apple started serializing parts. Etc.
