Initial Discovery Begins to See if SIM-Swap Case Can Be Maintained as Class Action

Plaintiff Eman Bayani and defendant T-Mobile agreed to proceed with an initial phase of discovery in Bayani SIM-swap fraud class action “to determine the number of members of the proposed class and thus whether this action will be maintainable as a class action,” said their joint status report and discovery plan Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00271) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle. The parties also agreed to defer additional discovery until the numerosity issue is resolved and the court enters a case schedule following its ruling on T-Mobile’s currently pending motion to dismiss, said the report. Bayani alleges scammers convinced T-Mobile to transfer access to his cellphone number from his registered SIM card to the scammers’ SIM card (see 2303010030). The scammers accessed Bayani’s Coinbase account and lifted more than $24,000 in cash reserves and bitcoin from that account. T-Mobile’s defense is that it cautioned Metro by T-Mobile customers like Bayani not to use their Metro service for authenticating other accounts, warning Metro couldn’t guarantee security, but Bayani did so anyway.