As cryptocurrency grows in popularity and users utilize phone numbers as a way to authenticate one-another, the perils are great for the so-called high-rollers in the crypto world.

Scammers are able to find the people who own large amounts of crypto via publically available information.

Although not commonly known scammers look up photos of family members and send those photos to the wealth crypto holders in hopes of extorting money from them.

What may not be known is hackers also use SIM swap fraud to get control of a phone number and then get access to funds or impersonate the user to get access to funds.

This happened to Michael Terpin – he then worked with AT&T to have a special 6-digit passcode attached to his account so this would not happen again.

The hackers then went to an AT&T store and got them to help facilitate SIM Swap Fraud.

Michael lost $24M and sued AT&T. The judge did not award damages but dismissed the claims with “leave to amend,” meaning that Terpin has 21 days to file a new version of his lawsuit that more fully explains how the cryptocurrency was stolen and why AT&T should be held responsible.

While this is not a win for Michael – we feel his pain and need to remind carriers they could be held partially or fully liable for such scams and account transfer fraud could become a much larger financial problem for numerous institutions depending on the outcome of the amended lawsuit.