Verizon S4 owned by company locked out at Samsung account screen by ex employee, how can I get in?

[AC Question]

Verizon S4 owned by company locked out at Samsung account screen by ex employee

I work in the IT Department of my company in charge of all the company cell phones. An employee left the company and when the phone was returned to me by HR; the phone had a lock screen. I hardware reset the phone so that it can be re-deployed to a new user. When I went to setup the phone again it will not go past the Samsung Account screen saying, "This phone is locked because of an abnormal factory reset..."
The employee is already gone and I am not able / allowed to contact them to ask for the samsung ID and password they used.

Is there anyway I can bypass this screen and get it unlocked so I can use the phone again. Is there a way I can flash the phone or something from my laptop? Any help will be great. If I can't figure out how to fix this phone we will have to just throw it away. We have a lot of the S4 and S5's out there and I'm worried I'm going to keep running into this problem.

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Verizon S4 owned by company locked out at Samsung account screen by ex employee

Welcome to Android Central! Since the phone is for enterprise and you're in an IT department, try contacting Samsung directly and see if they can help. They probably wouldn't do much for a personal phone, but maybe they can help you bypass it since it's an enterprise device.