Michael Terpin, an entrepreneur, and cryptocurrency investor has sued telecommunications company AT & T for $224 million after he lost millions of dollars in the cryptocurrency theft.
A crypto investor has filed a 69-page complaint against AT&T in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, in which he discloses that he lost $24 million worth of cryptocurrency after the cellular service provider carelessly allowed a hacker to get unauthorized access to his cell phone account.
He mentioned that “AT&T’s willing cooperation with the hacker, gross negligence, violation of its statutory duties, and failure to adhere to its commitments in its Privacy Policy”
The AT&T Cryptocurrency theft
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Within the last 7 months, Terpin became a victim of two hacks. Terpin also asserted that theft has resulted due to the negligence on behalf of AT&T and the case assets willing cooperation. After the first attack, Terpin asserted that the AT&T insider gave Terpin’s phone number to the imposer without asking for any valid identification or a password.
He stated that “What AT&T did was like a hotel giving a thief with a fake ID a room key and a key to the room safe to steal jewelry in the safe from the rightful owner.”
Crypto Theft Details
As per the complaint, the crypto theft occurred via a sim card swap that enabled hackers to obtain access on January 7th, 2018. The sim card swap includes acquiring the operator to transfer the phone number to a different sim that appears to have been done without any need of identity verification process.
The fraud looks like a traditional approach, where hackers pretended to be Terpin and requested for the phone number to be transferred to their own device. Preferably, someone who is working in the firm, as claimed in the suit.
As soon as the phone number was obtained, the hackers requested a password change and reset the security of his accounts, changing the password of his cryptocurrency accounts, and transferring funds to external crypto wallet.
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Terpin has co-founded an angel group known as BitAngles in 2013. He is requesting USD 200 Million in penal damages and USD 24 Million in compensation for the crypto theft. AT&T has come under the radar for collaborating with NSA in the wiretapping scandal, disclosing the world’s communications for inspection without any permission from the respective party.
