Group of Investors Sue AT&T On Allegations Of Creation Of Fake Accounts

25-Sep-2019 | Facts and Factors

AT&T has been sued by a group of investors on the allegations that the senior management of the company has pressurized its employees into the creation of fake accounts for DirecTV Now which is the live TV streaming service of AT&T. The investors allege that this has been done to inflate the number of subscribers artificially. These fake accounts tend to subscribe DirecTV Now. Looking lucrative to Time Warner for merger being the motive for this manipulation says the lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed by the investors has leveled allegations that the employees had been strong-armed and the senior management forced them to slip the subscriptions of DirecTV Now into the existing accounts of AT&T without the knowledge of customers from 2016 till 2018.

The lawsuit further alleges that it was a common practice of the involved employees to pretend to waive the upgrade fee for AT&T customers who used the companies mobile carrier service and then the employees used email addresses which were fake and the financial information of the customers and charge the upgrade fee while they would sign up for DirecTV Now accounts for up to three accounts. 

The suit further states that the sales executives which included the president of sales, Brian Shay had knowledge of the scheme and actively encouraged it.

This artificially boosted subscriber base of DirecTV Now subscribers was misleading for the investors as it was not in congruence with the statements that were being made during that time by the CEO publicly claiming that the growth of the DirecTV subscribers was organic.

This move to hide the failures of DirecTV had the motivation of the looking valuable to Time Warner which AT&T was in merger talks with.

The AT&T spokesperson has called the claims baseless and vowed to fight them in the court.