Posted on 08/06/2019 4:48:34 PM PDT by ransomnote
AT&T employees took bribes to unlock millions of smartphones, and to install malware and unauthorized hardware on the company's network, the Department of Justice said yesterday.
These details come from a DOJ case opened against Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old man from Pakistan, and his co-conspirator, Ghulam Jiwani, believed to be deceased.
The DOJ charged the two with paying more than $1 million in bribes to several AT&T employees at the company's Mobility Customer Care call center in Bothell, Washington.
OPERATING SINCE 2012 The bribery scheme lasted from at least April 2012 until September 2017. Initially, the two Pakistani men bribed AT&T employees to unlock expensive iPhones so they could be used outside AT&T's network.
The two recruited AT&T employees by approaching them in private via telephone or Facebook messages. Employees who agreed, received lists of IMEI phone codes which they had to unlock for sums of money.
Employees would then receive bribes in their bank accounts, in shell companies they created, or as cash, from the two Pakistani men.
This initial stage of the scheme last for about a year, until April 2013, when several employees left or were fired by AT&T.
THE MALWARE STAGE That's when Fahd changed tactics and bribed AT&T employees to install malware on AT&T's network at the Bothell call center. Between April and October 2013, this initial malware collected data on how AT&T infrastructure worked.
According to court documents unsealed yesterday, this malware appears to be a keylogger, having the ability "to gather confidential and proprietary information regarding the structure and functioning of AT&T's internal protected computers and applications.
The DOJ said Fahd and his co-conspirator then created a second malware strain that leveraged the information acquired through the first. This second malware used AT&T employee credentials to perform automated actions on AT&T's internal application to unlock phone's at Fahd's behest, without needing to interact with AT&T employees every time.
In November 2014, as Fahd began having problems controlling this malware, the DOJ said he also bribed AT&T employees to install rogue wireless access points inside AT&T's Bothell call center. These devices helped Fahd with gaining access to AT&T internal apps and network, and continue the rogue phone unlocking scheme.
ONE AT&T EMPLOYEE MADE $428,500 The DOJ claims Fahd and Jiwani paid more than $1 million in bribes to AT&T employees, and successfully unlocked more than two million devices, most of which were expensive iPhones. One AT&T employee received more than $428,500 in bribes over a five year period, investigators said. MORE AT LINK
And these two Jihadis were funded by?
“...These details come from a DOJ case opened against Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old man from Pakistan...”
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Of all the degrees of nasty Muslims, Pakistanis are, without doubt, the very nastiest!
The penalty for this should be a public draw and quarter with the heads impaled on pikes surrounding the Washington Monument.
Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old man from Pakistan, and his co-conspirator, Ghulam Jiwani, believed to be deceased.
Who in their right mind would use Pakistani IT guys?
Wow
You beat me to it. Nothing says deterrence like heads on pikes.
If they were “unlocking iPhones”, then isn’t this financial fraud rather than espionage or terrorism?
You would be surprised.
They are everywhere in high tech all brought in under H1b.
We had about 100 in my building at Intel.
Things always seemed to get stressful when something was developing between India and Pak.
Oh, those funny, fun-loving moozlums. Always good for a few chuckles. At least they didn’t slit the AT&T employees’ throats.
Terrorists need communications.
Maybe they threatened to do that, if they refused the bribes. 😁
For years, I thought highly of AT&T customer service. That changed dramatically two years ago. I could write a book.
It is my opinion that their personnel mostly do not live in America, and do not partake of the services for which they pretend to provide assistance, and thus at best are incompetent to provide any effective help to do much of anything more than take one’s money.
Uh, maybe a company that shares all of your personal information with Federal intelligence agencies without your permission.
The more important identifier is that they’re MUZZLIMES, not that they’re AT&T employees. Obviously, the first trumps the second in their allegiance. Throw them into some dark hole of a prison and never let them communicate with the outside or each other again.
“Who in their right mind would use Pakistani IT guys?”
IBM does.
screw AT&T: this whole smartphone locking scam is bullshit anyway ...
Pakistan again
Yep, but guess what ... this is SOP for big business, whether its telecom, or finance, or insurance, or tech support.
Good luck finding anyone who uses US employees @ their call centers.
*ping*
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