Man who unlocked 1.9 million AT&T phones sentenced to 12 years in prison

A US district court sentenced a man who unlocked 1.9 million phones to 12 years in prison. Muhammad Fahd continued to defraud the company even after learning of an investigation against him, according to the Justice Department. At Fahd’s sentencing hearing, Judge Robert S. Lasnik said he had committed a “terrible cybercrime over a long period of time,” AT&T reportedly lost $ 201.5 million as a result.

Fahd contacted an AT&T employee via Facebook in 2012 and bribed him to help unlock customers’ phones with “large sums of money.” Fahd, a citizen of Pakistan and Grenada, urged the employee to also recruit colleagues at a call center in Bothell, Wash., For the program.

The DOJ says employees unlocked phones for “ineligible customers,” who paid fees to Fahd. In the spring of 2013, AT&T deployed a system that made it more difficult for employees to unlock IMEIs. Fahd then hired an engineer to create malware that would be installed on AT & T’s systems to help him unlock phones more efficiently and remotely. The DOJ says employees gave Fahd details about the company’s systems and unlocking methods to aid this process. The malware allegedly obtained system information and credentials from other AT&T employees. The developer used these details to modify the malware.

AT&T claims that Fahd and his associates have unlocked just over 1.9 million phones through the program. The company claims that due to the unlocks, customers failed to make payments on their devices, resulting in a nine-figure loss.

Fahd was arrested in Hong Kong in 2018 following a 2017 indictment. He was extradited to the United States and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September 2020.