AT&T lost $5 million in the alleged conspiracy, or far less than one percent of their annual revenue.
AT&T lost $5 million in the alleged conspiracy, or far less than one percent of their annual revenue. Tim Boyle/Getty

A Pakistani man is being charged with bribing AT&T employees in Bothell.

The story, which was first reported by ZDNet, goes back to 2012, when two Pakistani nationals named Muhammad Fahd and Ghulam Jiwani allegedly recruited several employees at AT&T Mobility Customer Care Center outside Seattle to unlock AT&T phones so they could resell them for use outside of the company's network.

According to court records unsealed this week, Fahd and Jiwani, who is now deceased, allegedly shifted their tactics in April 2013, and started bribing AT&T employees to install malware on their employer's system. This allowed the duo to unlock AT&T phones remotely.

Over all, Fahd reportedly paid out nearly a million dollars to AT&T employees between 2012 and 2017, including $428,500 to a single worker. AT&T says the company lost nearly $5 million in revenue due to the alleged conspiracy, which unlocked upwards of 2 million phones.

ā€œThis defendant thought he could safely run his bribery and hacking scheme from overseas, making millions of dollars while he induced young workers to choose greed over ethical conduct,ā€ said U.S. Attorney Brian Moran in a statement. ā€œNow he will be held accountable for the fraud and the lives he has derailed.ā€

Fahd was arrested in Hong Kong in early 2018 and extradited to the U.S. last week.

While I know stealing is a legal and moral transgression, and that there are disturbing security implications here (though AT&T says these hackers did not access to customers' personal data), I'm having a hard time feeling bad for AT&T (and only partially because I just got my phone bill). The reason AT&T locked their phones was so customers would be forced to use their network even after their phone was paid off. This used to be standard practice.

Thanks to legislation passed under President Obama (miss ya, buddy), phone carriers are now required to unlock phones after they are paid off if the customer requests it, but it's not hard to see why a black market for unlocked phones exists. Phones are expensive. But while charging people thousands of dollars a year for phone service might pay (AT&T's revenue in the last quarter of 2018 was $48 billion) ripping those same companies off apparently does not: Fahd is now facing 20 years in prison.