Kenneth Carter, a 44-year-old former AT&T retail employee in Portland, Oregon, has been sentenced to 16 months in federal prison for his role in a SIM swapping conspiracy that targeted at least three victims with a combined intended loss of $593,963. He was also ordered to pay $99,528 in restitution.
Carter pleaded guilty on March 24, 2026, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. The sentence, handed down on September 9, marks the conclusion of an investigation led by the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the FDIC Office of Inspector General.
The inside job
SIM swapping works like this: a bad actor convinces (or pays) someone at a phone carrier to transfer a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card. Once the number is ported over, the attacker receives every call and text meant for the victim, including those one-time passcodes banks send for two-factor authentication.
Working at an AT&T retail store from May 2018 until his termination in November 2019, Carter had direct access to the systems needed to execute SIM swaps. At the direction of a hacker, he performed unauthorized swaps that gave his co-conspirators the ability to intercept victims’ banking credentials and drain their accounts.
For each successful swap, Carter pocketed between $1,000 and $2,000. He admitted to performing additional unauthorized swaps beyond the specific instances documented in the charges against him.
In one case, $99,528 was fraudulently transferred to a bank account in Portugal controlled by Carter’s co-conspirators. Investigators later recovered personally identifiable information belonging to the victims at Carter’s residence.
The gap between $1,000 per swap and the hundreds of thousands in potential victim losses illustrates the asymmetry that makes insider-facilitated fraud so attractive to criminal networks. Carter’s 16-month sentence and $99,528 restitution order represent accountability, but they also represent a fraction of the $593,963 in intended losses across the scheme.