The unlock tool would only work if it successfully authenticates with Xiaomi's server with matching Mi Cloud ID as the one previously registered to the device. So I very much doubt that it is stolen.
Re:Windows 10 on the Xiaomi PocoPhone F1
by scruffyherder on Monday July 03, 2023 @01:13AM
(#36569173)
I was worried it was stolen, but it was not. I reached out to him, and he did contact Xiaomi, but that went nowhere. So he gave me a password to try and it worked, so I could log him out after giving him the account number, and he could then retrieve all his lost data, so it was a win/win.
He had migrated all his google data but didn't realize there was more to it than that. It was innocent enough, not every used phone is stolen.
But it's something to be mindful of, that a 'working phone' may in fact be locked.
I thought this bit was phrased a little too kindly. While it's unclear whether it was the case here or not [0], usually when you buy a locked phone off eBay and the seller has "forgotten" to log out of their cloud account and has "forgotten" their password (and login too, to boot!) it's because the phone was stolen.
[0]: OP claims "seller went above and beyond" to get the phone unlocked, which I initially interpreted as "figured out the locked account info" but then continued to read and learned that the use of an unlock tool was involved.. making me once again doubt the veracity of the "forgetful seller" story.