I somewhat doubt that story. If you paid a hacker to unlock the cell-mate, you are not very enlightened.
There are several ways to get out: The device has a metal ring, but the rest is made from some plastic. Just bend the tube part up until the connection with the metal ring breaks, and you are free (after sliding your "package" out of the ring). It sure breaks the device, but that is no big issue. Paying for a new Cellmate sure beats paying blackmail money - and sure is cheaper too.
I will leave it to the techies to figure out the ways to force an unlock of the device, in order not to ruin anyone's fun.
Last option is to contact QIUI - yes they are in China - but they all lock data is stored in their database, so they can clear the lock status. I believe they reset all the locks when this problem happened.
Houdinni