For an insider's perspective....
I'm posting anonymously since I've got first hand experience with people trying this unsuccessfully. Nobody ever made it past me. Generally, its unlock fraud but we do get billing and payment fraud too.
I used to work for AT&T Mobility in Advanced Tech Support chat at Rio Rancho, which is internally MOBCARE-ATS-RRCC, which is where this probably happened, unless this guy's on a unified bill (and unified is stupider than shit) which ATS doesn't handle because a division over at wireline or uVerse handles them. I doubt that Bothell or Dallas did it, but it could have been them too. Bothell was the reason that agents can't do immediate unlocks in TORCH anymore and have to submit it to their supervisor or back office for approval.
Thing is, Fraud is usually really, really easy to detect in Mobility Clarify, fairly easy in Telegence, even easier in System X where you order equipment like a handset, Microcell or SIM, and even easier than that if you're slightly evil and decide to play with settings in TORCH because you think the "cx" is playing fast and loose with the truth, if they have a connection to the network at all you can change settings, push them to the handset and then ask to see them.
For example:
ME: "I just sent you a multimedia message (or changed your VM pilot), I need you to tell me what the picture is/or what the new phone number for the VM pilot is"
Lying Fake Customer: "The AT&T logo/+1636XXXXXXXX"
ME: "No guy, its a balloon/+1212XXXXXXX, and I'll ask you to be honest with me in the future"
ME: "I need your IMEI, you can see it by dialing *#06*#"
LFC: its XXXXXXXXXXXX
ME: "No, not quite"
SYSTEM: "CHAT DISCONNECTED"
Thing is, we stopped being allowed to PIN verify through sending an SMS, which is what happened here, back in November of last year. Its simply not good enough for the many reasons enumerated above. And we can't make any changes to the myAT&T information, customer has to do that themselves over the phone with voice ATS in Atlanta.
I'm not saying the complainant is a liar, but I dont think he's being completely forthcoming nor is he as secure as he thinks he is. Especially by linking paypal to his bank. And it doesn't take that much time to get the fake charges dropped, even an ATS agent can waive the charges up to 1500 if there's a fraudulent charge affidavit in clarify, which there will be even though fraud usually just calls billing themselves.