You are quite near sighted to say things you don't know well too boldly. If a phone is reported stolen, its IMEI is locked, then changing the IMEI is supporting stealing. I have a different story for you to consider.

I bought a N95 operator locked to Softbank Japan. Softbank does not support Nokia firmware update. Elsewhere in the world the N95s are updated to 3.* firmwares but in Japan, the firmware for N95 just remain the same at 2.* version. I change the regional code to a non-softbank one, update to the new 3.* firmware, and get myself to a delema: the phone nolonger work with Softbank because all pre-configured things like useragent, wap setting for softbank are gone.

Failed to get setting information for N95 from softbank, I bought another softbank phone, a Toshiba T01a, which turned out to be a joke because the windows phone doesnot have english UI.

Frustrated, I put the softbank SIM back to the N95 to find out that its IMEI has been locked by softbank !! I made lots of complaint to softbank but cannot get my N95 IMEI back. So I send it to my country and a new IMEI is implanted in 5 minutes. (That's why I decided to stay away from any Japanese operator-locked phone and get myself a real treat, a N900, anyway).

In this island, even using a non-operator-locked phone is said to be illegal by those stupid japanese phone sellers. They locked my IMEI just because I bring it to them and by a new one from them!

I hope in my case, you don't see that changing the IMEI of MYOWN phone because it has been illegally IMEI locked by operator as illegal.

I am not a phone technician so I dont know how to do it, but I haven't seen any phone with IMEI impossible to be changed. Well, don't support stolen phones, but I love the idea of being able to do whatever you like with the product you own. I hate the idea my beloved one is being tracked. How many stolen phones have found their way back to their owners thanks to IMEI? So why IMEI?