It is unfortunate for the many great N900 users in China trying to sell their used phones that this is happening.
I would actually be interested myself in the process of changing the IMEI and other GSM modem settings for geeky reasons of complete control of my hardware but with the counterfeit "New" N900's coming out of China with repaired Nokia circuit boards in new cases, probably some with stolen or blacklisted IMEI's, the trust is broken and this thread, true or false, is just another nail in the coffin.