Carrier employee arrested for inflating customer bill to earn more commission

There have been countless incidents of wireless customers reporting fishy activity in their accounts. Employees engaging in such activities need to know that they could get in serious trouble for adding lines to a customer account as an AT&T retail sales consultant has been arrested for doing just that.

Katie Ann Barnaby has been accused of misusing AT&T's system access for unauthorized modifications to customer accounts to earn commission.

She was arrested on January 5 after a victim complained to state police in February 2024 about unauthorized changes to their AT&T account. The victim bought a phone, a smartwatch, and accessories from an AT&T store in Stafford Springs in December 2021 where Barnaby was the consultant.

After the purchases, the victim began noticing that their monthly bills were higher than what had been discussed with Barnaby. When they investigated the matter, they found that protection plans and features had been added to their account without consent. This resulted in significant charges above what they had agreed to.

AT&T informed them that Barnaby had behaved similarly with at least 30 other customers between November 2021 and January 2022. She added and removed protection plans and features from customer accounts to generate commission-based profits. She also added and removed lines without permission.

AT&T sales consultants were paid between $7 to $20 for each protection plan they added and were entitled to 5 percent of the sales price for accessories.

According to the company's payment records, Barnaby's monthly commission structure included a variable pay of $1,150 which was based on meeting certain sales goals and quotas.

Barnaby would also keep trade-in devices, presumably reselling them online. On top of that, she would reuse the serial numbers from the trade-in devices to add lines to other customers' accounts.

After an internal investigation was launched into Barmaby's behavior, she was fired from the Stafford Springs location on July 15, 2022. She was rehired as a manager at a Willimantic-based AT&T-authorized retailer around August 2022 where she continued tampering with accounts.