A California man has filed a lawsuit against AT&T claiming that its employees were enablers in a “SIM swap” scam which resulted in the theft of over $1.8 million in total, including cryptocurrencies.
Seth Shapiro, the California resident, claims that between May 16 and May 18 AT&T employees transferred access to Shapiro’s mobile phone to outside hackers.
“AT&T employees obtained unauthorised 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 utilised 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.”
It’s not clear who was behind the attack.
The document states that these actions allowed the hackers to also access Shapiro’s personal accounts on several cryptocurrency exchanges.
“While third parties had control over Mr. Shapiro’s AT&T wireless number, they used that control to access and reset the passwords for Mr. Shapiro’s accounts on cryptocurrency exchange platforms including KuCoin, Bittrex, Wax, Coinbase, Huobi, Crytopia, LiveCoin, HitBTC, Coss.io, Liqui, and Bitfinex.”
Shapiro also claims to be in possession of chat logs in which AT&T employees and hackers discuss how the stolen money should be routed and “brag” about how much they took.
