Per the Maryland Attorney General’s Office: The Appellate Court of Maryland has upheld a Final Order issued by the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division (CPD) finding that AT&T, Inc., and Cricket Wireless LLC engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices, in violation of the Maryland Consumer Protection Act, when they sold Cricket cellphones that they knew would stop working after Cricket and AT&T entered into a corporate merger agreement in 2013.

In its July 21, 2021, Final Order, CPD found that the companies’ merger plans included decommissioning Cricket’s CDMA wireless network, which would, and ultimately did, cause Cricket’s CDMA-only cellphones to stop working. Our Consumer Protection Division determined that AT&T and Cricket violated the Consumer Protection Act by continuing to sell the CDMA-only devices to Maryland consumers for more than 18 months before shutting down Cricket’s CDMA network. The company ultimately sold more than 50,000 soon-to-be-inoperable devices in Maryland, without adequately disclosing their plan to render the devices inoperable. The Division ordered AT&T and Cricket to refrain from similar conduct in the future, to provide restitution to consumers who purchased Cricket CDMA-only devices during the relevant period, and to pay civil penalties.