WMD gone wild

Worried colleague on the line: "Listen, I've got three instances of every contact on my phone!"
- I'll help you delete them manually, I said, and started The Lotus Administrator.

My colleague had just received a shiny new WMD phone (Windows Mobile Device, or, as a well-known Irish Lotus dude loves to say: Weapons of Mass Destruction) and had just finished the Lotus Traveler installation.

"Uh, it's not three any more, it's six". My friend on the line sounds more stressed now.
- "No, I see at least fifteen", I said, looking at the hidden "($Contacts)" view in his mail file at the server.

A few minutes later I count 60. The contacts list soon reach 30.000 names/duplicates and still growing. My colleague's phone turns sluggish and is about to give up. My colleague is "worried", enough said.

70.000 and still growing ....  Phew, this guy will soon have more names in his contacts database than there are people in China. I order him to shut down the mobile phone. Then, via remote control, I make a backup copy of his local contacts database, and delete everything from the (Contacts) view on the mail server.
Looks fine a few minutes, until all names suddenly reappear!. The WMD wasn't shut down after all, and suddenly it has filled the contacts database again.
Same operation once more, after the phone is confirmed shut down. Looks better this time, but a few minutes later the local names.nsf replicates and refills everything again. 70.000 names just won't go away that easy. New try: Delete local names, mail file on server, phone. Looks better this time.

Oh no, there it blows again. Calls colleague - have you stopped the sync process on the phone? (What process ??) D'oh!  Orders colleague to delete every entry in the phone's contacts list. (YES, please do! Now!!)

Deletes local mail replica, just to reduce the number of replicating db's. Deletes everything from local names, mail file and phone.  Then restores names.nsf from tape, MANUALLY COPY all contacts back into the empty names.nsf. (Otherwise the deletion stubs would remove them again)
Syncs against central mail --> OK.
Syncs to WMD --> OK.
Colleague happy again.

Reason for this? I'm not sure, but it looked to me as if there were a bunch of replication conflicts in the contacts database the first time I opened it. Could this be it?  The WMD runs the newest WM 6.5 with the 8.5.1.1 Lotus Traveler.

BTW: Here is a nice tool for deleting duplicates from WMDs: http://gydarindustries.com/?page_id=4