The Curious Case of AT&T, Seth Shapiro's SIM Card and a Stolen $1.8M

Over the past week, the global crypto community bore witness to a unique case wherein California resident and blockchain entrepreneur Seth Shapiro filed a lawsuit against American telecom giant AT&T - alleging that a couple of the firm's employees had perpetrated a nefarious SIM-swap scheme that resulted in the former losing $1.8 million in various crypto assets.

The plaintiff has also alleged that he is currently in possession of chat logs that clearly show the AT&T employees and hackers discussing their plans to use the stolen funds to acquire their dream cars and other valuable objects.

"AT&T employees obtained unauthorized access to Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless account, viewed his confidential and proprietary personal information, and transferred control to a phone controlled by third-party hackers in exchange for money. The hackers then utilized their control over Mr. Shapiro's AT&T wireless number to access his personal and digital finance accounts and steal more than $1.8 million."

First, Cointelegraph wanted verified whether Shapiro had indeed made repeated attempts to get AT&T's service operators to prioritize his calls in order to protect his account.

It should be mentioned that AT&T has had a poor track record when it comes to SIM-swapping incidents, with occurrences more than doubling between January 2013 and 2016.Also, in an earlier case relatively similar to this one - Terpin v. AT&T - a United States court did lay some responsibility on the claimant for failing to secure the account adequately.

"The evidence in this case of AT&T's culpability and negligence is overwhelming. We fully anticipate that AT&T will be held legally accountable for its actions and those of its employees."

"AT&T is liable for its employees criminal acts via a theory of vicarious liability that holds a company accountable for the acts of its employees. The chat logs introduced into evidence by Mr. Shapiro further detail the scheme to steal Mr. Shapiro's cryptocurrency and AT&T is equally negligent for not protecting Mr. Shapiro against this scheme and fraud."

"As you can see, it was impossible for Shapiro to call the police, because it did not happen between long periods of time, but rather very quickly. Robert Jack and Jarratt White, two people standing behind the theft from AT&T's side, were confirmed to be employed there, their involvement in the case was also confirmed."

Other notable cases involving AT&TTerpin v. AT&T Mobility: Last year, Michael Terpin, a prominent cryptocurrency advocate and the founder of Marketwire, was the victim of SIM swap fraud involving AT&T. He filed a lawsuit against the firm in August 2018, later winning $75.8 million in a civil judgment - even though AT&T filed for a dismissal of the lawsuit, the plea was eventually overruled by the court.

Basu v. AT&T: On Aug. 27, 2018, REACT investigators confirmed that an unknown individual was able to gain control of Saswata Basu's phone and steal his AT&T cell phone account via a SIM swap.