Check your bank account: Long-awaited T-Mobile settlement checks finally issued

(NEXSTAR) – Some T-Mobile customers have finally started receiving rather large payouts – as big as $25,000 – from a class action lawsuit that was settled back in 2022, the company managing the payments says.

The lawsuit came after a cyberattack in August 2021 compromised the personal data of 76 million T-Mobile customers in the U.S. The data that was breached included customers’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

T-Mobile denied any wrongdoing in the data breach, but agreed to pay $350 million to settle the suit.

After years of legal disputes and delays, the payments finally began to go out starting May 30, the settlement administrator said. If you think you're eligible for a payout, keep your eyes on your accounts. "Distribution to valid claimants will occur over the following several weeks," according to the administrator.

The payment could come in the form of a paper check or a digital payment method, depending on what you selected when you filed a claim.

The size of the payment you receive will also depend on your circumstances, namely how much time and money you lost as a result of the breach. All 76 million customers whose data was compromised in the cyberattack qualified for some money, but those who were victims of identity theft as a result qualify for more.

If you “spent money trying to avoid or recover from fraud or identity theft that you believe was fairly traceable to the T-Mobile Data Breach,” you qualified for the biggest payout: reimbursement of up to $25,000. These customers were instructed to provide documentation of their losses, which could include the time it took to freeze their credit, money spent on credit monitoring services, or losses resulting from identity theft.

T-Mobile customers who didn’t file that sort of documentation still get a piece of the settlement fund – just a much smaller one. If you didn’t claim any out-of-pocket losses but were impacted by the massive breach, you could receive a cash payment of up to $25 (or $100 for people who lived in California in August 2021).

Those payment estimates are the maximum – not the minimum – amount you should expect to receive as checks are issued. The $350 million fund has to cover lawyers’ fees, administrative expenses and tens of millions of potentially valid claims.