Possibly (I'm still enough of a cynic to say "probably") good news -- it looks like these weasels may actually have been telling the truth when they said that they were buying them for resale.
It appears that there is an ongoing racket in "unlocking" these phones, and selling them at huge markups for use as "normal" cell phones.
Check these out:
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=546164&version=4&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TracFone_Wireless
The other possible/"hopefully-probable" good news is that it's looking like they DIDN'T pass through Ludington -- according to the recent news reports they took the *really* long drive through Michigan's "U.P.", and then drove over the Macinac Bridge (you've probably seen reports and threads on this already, but it all of a sudden clicked for me that they *couldn't* have taken the ferry after all!)
Regardless, the Pumped Storage Facility IS a vulnerability, and I *hope* they will be maintaining *good* security for it!
(Posting this to the relevant threads.)
Argh, you fell off the pinglist!