“Over time, I became obsessed with the money and any thought that I was doing wrong disappeared,” Fahd wrote. They said that based on the limited records they were able to locate, Fahd made at least $5.3 million.
government recover any ill-gotten assets, prosecutors noted. District Judge Robert Lasnik – but he did not go so far as to help the U.S. Gorman said in a news release.įahd apologized in a letter to U.S. “This defendant is a modern-day cybercriminal who combined his technological expertise with old-school techniques such as bribery, intimidation, and exploitation,” Acting U.S. in 2019, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy one year ago and was sentenced Thursday. Prosecutors said such losses would have been passed on to consumers, in terms of higher overall prices, and shareholders.įahd was extradited to the U.S. The company based its $200 million loss amount on just phones that were removed from its network before customers fully paid for them – not including the amount it lost on service contracts. More than 1.9 million phones were unlocked as part of the conspiracy, AT&T’s forensic analysis found.
He paid three AT&T workers $922,000 from 2012 to 2017 before he was arrested in Hong Kong in early 2018. He bragged of hiring the British singer-songwriter Jay Sean to play his wedding for $100,000, according to the U.S. His extravagant lifestyle included frequent trips abroad, $1,000-a-night hotel stays in Dubai and a $30,000 watch. He persisted even after the company detected the initial scheme and fired two of the workers involved, prosecutors said.įahd sold the illegal phone-unlocking service through online retailers, raking in millions.
#FACEBOOK SESSION EXPIRED CONSPIRACY INSTALL#
The customers could then buy cheaper service for their phones.įahd later had workers install malware on the company’s network, allowing him to unlock the phones from Pakistan. That allowed the phones to be removed from AT&T’s network, even if customers had not finished paying for the expensive devices or their service contracts had not expired. Muhammad Fahd, 35, of Karachi, recruited an employee of an AT&T call center in Bothell, Washington, via Facebook in 2012, and began bribing that employee and his co-workers to use their credentials to unlock phones. SEATTLE (AP) – A Pakistan resident has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for a conspiracy to “unlock” phones from AT&T’s network, a scheme the company says cost it more than $200 million. The AT&T logo is positioned above one of its retail stores in New York.