Rebecca Day

T-Mobile negligently allowed a SIM swap to occur, enabling an identity thief to take over a customer’s phone number and create an account using her personal information and phone number, alleged a Feb. 27 fraud complaint (docket 8:24-cv-00734) filed in Orange County, California, Superior Court and removed Thursday to U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana.

Verizon’s mishandling of a customer’s cellphone return may have cost him the opportunity to buy a home, alleged Brian DeLong's Fair Credit Reporting Act complaint Wednesday (docket 2:24-cv-01545) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. The named defendants in the suit are the TCC Bellefontaine Verizon store in Bellefontaine, Ohio, Verizon itself, the debt collection firm I.C. System and the Equifax, Trans Union and Experian credit reporting agencies (CRAs). Bellefontaine resident DeLong visited TCC in July to ask about switching wireless carriers from AT&T and Verizon, the complaint said. He was told if he wasn’t satisfied with the switch, he could go back to AT&T within 30 days without being charged, and AT&T confirmed it. After switching, DeLong experienced connection “lags and dropped calls,” the complaint said, so he switched back to AT&T, canceled the Verizon contract, “timely returned” the phones to TCC, and received a return receipt showing TCC accepted the return, it said. Verizon didn’t notify DeLong of the return, and it “repackaged the phones as new,” despite having no right to do so, alleged the complaint. In September, Verizon demanded that DeLong pay $6,109.63; DeLong notified Verizon the charge was an error, it said. DeLong received a bill for the same amount the next month, and again notified Verizon of the error. In a November letter, I.C. System informed DeLong it was seeking to collect a debt on behalf of Verizon for $6,109.63 plus $610.96 in fees. Later that month, DeLong had a conference call with Verizon and the store, during which Verizon and TCC acknowledged DeLong had returned the phones. When DeLong called I.C. System to say he didn’t owe Verizon money, the debt collection firm “disregarded” his explanation, the complaint said, and continued to pursue payment. In December, DeLong received credit reports from the three CRAs, each showing debts of $6,720.59, it said. He hired a lawyer, who sent a debt validation letter Jan. 2 to I.C. System, disputing the alleged debt and requesting validation, the complaint said. On Jan. 17, DeLong received a letter from I.C. System confirming it would “no longer be pursuing the debt,” it said. He disputed the “false, inaccurate and misleading” reporting of debt by the CRAs, none of which conducted a “reasonable reinvestigation” as required by the FCRA, the complaint said. As a result of the CRAs’ actions, DeLong’s credit was adversely affected, he has had difficulty buying a home, and he has had to search for homes with a higher interest rate, the complaint said. He also experiences “severe emotional distress, including anxiety, stress, and sleepless nights,” and suffered over $25,000 in damages as a result of the defendants’ "actions and inactions," it said. DeLong claims violations of the Ohio Consumer Protection Act, plus negligence, fraudulent inducement, conversion and unjust enrichment vs. TCC. He brings FCRA claims vs. Verizon and the CRAs and a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act vs. I.C. System. The plaintiff requests maximum statutory damages, plus actual, emotional, general, punitive and other damages, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

ISP FirstDigital has blocked Comcast from exercising its rights under federal law to construct and operate its cable systems and connect requesting customers to its cable and other services in two Utah residential developments, alleged a Cable Act complaint Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00249) in U.S. District Court for Central Utah in Salt Lake City.

Home Depot “deceptively embedded spy tracking pixels in marketing emails” it sent to consumers, alleged a privacy class action Tuesday (docket 2:24-cv-00730) in U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix. The suit alleges Home Depot and tracking software company Validity violated Arizona’s Telephone, Utility and Communication Service Records Act (A.R.S).

AT&T misled Discovery by “materially overstating WarnerMedia’s financial performance and misrepresenting and concealing the severity of WarnerMedia’s financial and business difficulties,” alleged a securities fraud suit Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-00420) in U.S. District Court for Delaware in Wilmington. The suit names AT&T, CEO John Stankey and Warner Bros. Discovery as defendants.

LoanDepot’s “lack of oversight” of its security controls and implementation of enhanced security measures "only after” a January data breach are “inexcusable,” said a class action Tuesday (docket 4:24-cv-00239) in U.S. District Court for Western Missouri in Kansas City.

Despite AT&T’s assertion in 2021 that a hacked database containing the personally identifiable information (PII) of 70 million AT&T customers “does not appear to have come from our systems,” three years later “the same customer data from 2021 is no longer just for sale,” but it also “has been fully exposed on the Dark Web,” alleged a class action Tuesday (docket 1:24-cv-01414) in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia in Atlanta.

Three tracking pixels on the Reuters website collect visitors' IP addresses in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, alleged a class action Monday (docket 1:24-cv-02466) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.

The U.S. District Court for Virginia’s Oct. 26 ruling dismissing Hanan Elatr Khashoggi’s privacy case against NSO Group Technologies and Q Cyber Technologies for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction was “in error,” said Khashoggi's opening brief (docket 23-2234) in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday.

Since AT&T announced Saturday that “data-specific fields” were part of a data set involving 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former customers released on the dark web March 16, nine negligence class actions have been filed in U.S. District Court for Northern Texas in Dallas, including five by Kendall Law.