Yeah I have a hard time believing that with how many devices are for sale with iCloud lock on them. If it was easy or at least possible to remove the lock, you’d sure think these large eBay sellers would do it to be able to sell devices for more money. Also iCloud lock is administered through the phone contacting Apples servers when it’s connected to the internet, so removing the lock wouldn’t work unless the device somehow stayed offline from Wi-Fi and cellular data which is unrealistic as doing anything these days needs some form of connection to the internet. The only way to get around the lock would be to change the serial number and IMEI so that way when it phones home to apples server, it would show as a device that wasn’t locked.