A 35-year-old man from Pakistan and Grenada has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for unlocking nearly 2 million AT&T smartphones. The provider lost more than $200 million as a result. The man involved several AT&T employees in his large-scale scam.
The convicted criminal, Muhammad Fahd, began illegally unlocking AT&T smartphones in 2012. He did this with the help of an American employee of the provider who could pass him IMEI data about the smartphones. In 2013, AT&T introduced a new unlocking system for smartphones. This made it more difficult for Fahd and his accomplices to crack telephones, according to the US Department of Justice. To circumvent this system, the cybercriminal hired a software developer to write malware, which was installed with the help of newly bribed employees at AT&T.
Unlocked smartphones were remotely disconnected from the AT&T network by Fahd, allowing illegitimate customers to get out of their contract with the carrier against an illegal payment. As a result, AT&T said it lost more than $200 million in revenue, which Fahd has to pay back. In the end, an unknown number of employees at the Bothell, Washington call center were recruited and bribed to help Fahd hack into phones. Lawsuits are also ongoing against the accomplices; in total, the affected workers would have to pay nearly $1.1 million in compensation. No verdicts have yet been issued in those lawsuits.