Monday, December 10, 2018

A theft of my phone number and used that to steal money from me. Do I have any potential recourse, and if so, what specialization of attorney would I need?

Hi,

Basically a thief impersonated me to my mobile data service provider, stole my phone number, and used that to steal money from me.

I’m wondering if I have any recourse and what specialization of attorney to look for.

Summary of chain of events: 1. A thief called my service provider, and managed to convince them he was me.

  1. The thief convinced the service provider employee to remove my device from my telephone number, and to add his device.

  2. At that point, the thief was able to use my telephone number and his phone (device) to steal my main Gmail email via “Recovery” that uses an SMS-text to the phone number as authentication.

  3. Finally, using the stolen phone number and email address, the thief stole ~$20,500 worth of bitcoin from one of my accounts (~3.64 bitcoin)..

Questions: 1. Do I have any potential legal recourse against the service provider for giving the thief my phone number? It seems this company was the critical part of the thief’s execution, and I was otherwise secure.

  1. If so, what kind of attorney would I want to hire?

Thank you.

PS: I’ve already filed a police report with the FBI’s IC3.

PPS: I’m generally private, use different passwords on different sites, I change my passwords often and they’re usually unrelated to anything, and no one knows my info (ie, that I have crypto here or there, and I’ve never shared my passwords or PINs with anyone, not even friends or family).


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