I tried checking this out on youtube, wiping a phone say an lg800 one of those chocolates. Its possible to remove all info of the previous owner and other nasty bits that could get a person in shit. just don't know how to go about doing this, is there a series of buttons that can be pressed? Once the phone is wiped tho it would be used with minutes or such so it would need to be untraceable.

All the phones I've ever had, have had a menu option to reset to factory settings.

Unless you connect the phone through a data cable, you're still not going to be able to wipe the PUK code though, so it will always be tracable to the origional owner, as well as the serial numbers on the battery/other parts.