A millionaire crypto investor who was the victim of a sim swapping case that saw him lose $24 million worth of digital assets has seen his $224 million claim against mobile operator AT&T moved to the next stage after a Los Angeles federal judge rejected AT&T’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Michael Terpin claims that AT&T allowed his mobile sim to be compromised on two separate occasions. While the judge in the case threw out 13 of the 16 claims, he crucially allowed three to proceed, meaning that Terpin might yet get his day in court.
Our small victory over AT&T in getting the suit to court and denying all of their attempts to suppress testimony and evidence were picked up by Ars Technica, CNBC, CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, The NextWeb and host of smaller… https://t.co/StE13itMa9
— Michael Terpin (@michaelterpin) July 23, 2019
Terpin Continues On After Initial Award
Terpin is seeking $200 million in punitive damages from AT&T in addition to the money lost to the sim swappers, who Terpin claims worked in tandem with individuals inside the organization to compromise his account and rinse his crypto wallets. Terpin has already won a case against one of the sim swappers, Nicholas Truglia, who boasted about the $24 million theft on social media prior to his arrest, but has been keen to pursue the case against AT&T, in part to highlight their lax security. AT&T for their part welcomed the 13 dismissed claims, stating that this illustrates the lack of credibility of Terpin’s story and that they will vigorously contest the remaining claims.
AT&T Not Alone
AT&T is far from being the only telecoms company to find themselves at the receiving end of customer ire when it comes to sim swapping. Only last month T-Mobile found themselves besieged by calls from sim swap victims, with cryptocurrency veterans such as Minerupdate co-founder Andrew Yang stating that their SMS verification had been compromised. A negative result for AT&T in the case could see massive security changes enforced on telecoms companies, which would only be good news for investors and would help reduce cases like this happening again.
