Man Sentenced To 12 Years For Defrauding AT&T Of More Than $200 Million

A Pakistan resident was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a seven-year scheme to unlock AT&T phones, costing the company more than $200 million. 

Muhammad Fahd, 35, recruited AT&T employees from a call center in Bothell, Washington, and bribed them to unlock phones with their credentials. He eventually convinced them to install malware that allowed him to unlock the phones remotely from Pakistan.

According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Fahd pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud last month. He was ordered to pay $200,620,698 in restitution. 

The DOJ said Fahd began contacting AT&T employees in 2012 through Facebook using the alias “Frank Zhang.” He offered them “significant sums of money” to unlock the phones and asked them to recruit other employees to help.

In 2013, AT&T attempted to make it more difficult for the employees to unlock IMEI numbers. But Fahd hired a software developer to develop malware and installed it on AT&T’s computer systems, making it more efficient to unlock a greater number of phones. 

Fahd was arrested in Hong Kong in 2018, a year after he was indicted for the crime. In 2019 he was extradited to the United States and first appeared in a Seattle court in 2019.