AT&T will be back in court facing charges of failing to protect user information after part of a summary judgment in its favor was overturned on appeal.

The case began in 2020 when crypto investor Michael Terpin sued a recent high school graduate for stealing $24 million in the cryptocurrency Trigger from him through a SIM swap that allowed Pinsky to overcome the two-factor authentication protecting one of Terpin’s crypto wallets.

Ellis Pinsky was 15 in 2018 when he and an accomplice bribed an AT&T employee to transfer Terpin’s SIM (subscriber identity module) card information onto a blank card in their phone. The long and complicated legal struggle that followed earned Pinsky the nickname “Baby Al Capone” and involved him in a potentially precedent-setting case against AT&T.

AT&T had an obligation to protect the SIM card information

A panel in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Terpin’s claims were rightfully dismissed, except for the claim under Section 222 of the Federal Communications Act because Terpin’s SIM card information is protected under the act. The court did not reinstate Terpin’s fraud claim against AT&T or his demand for $216 million in punitive damages.

According to Terpin’s lead attorney Pierce O’Donnell, Terpin will now seek “$24 million plus at least $14 million of interest plus his attorney’s fees for a total of at least $45 million” from AT&T.

Terpin originally brought 16 charges against AT&T, but only three of them were allowed to proceed.

Dramatic twists and turns

Terpin used his investigative skills to track down Pinsky, who returned $2 million to him. In May 2020, after Pinsky had turned 18, Terpin sued him for $71.4 million — the balance of the stolen funds plus three times the damages as allowed for racketeering charges. Nonetheless, Pinsky agreed to testify on Terpin’s behalf in the case against AT&T.

Source: PastryEth

Terpin sued Pinsky’s accomplice, Nicholas Truglia, for $75.8 million in 2019 and won the case. Truglia was 21 at the time of the heist.

Truglia and Pinsky’s meeting online and its dramatic consequences were documented in a feature story in Rolling Stone in 2022. Pinsky recently graduated from New York University.

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