AT&T reportedly paid a hacker 5.7 bitcoins worth $373,646 to film themselves deleting tens of millions of customer phone calls and texts stolen from the US-based telecommunications giant.

The company revealed on Friday that the data of “nearly all” of its 109 million AT&T Wireless customers was stolen by the ShinyHunters crypto ransomware group in April through its account at cloud data firm Snowflake.

According to WIRED, a 5.7 bitcoin transaction took place on May 17. This was confirmed by the head of global investigations for the crypto-tracing firm TRM who added that the money was being laundered through various crypto exchanges and wallets.

WIRED reports that the hackers had originally demanded $1 million before AT&T negotiated to bring the ransom down to less than $400,000.

Read more: Compound Finance and Celer Network websites compromised in ‘front-end’ attacks

According to experts, the data could be used to determine an individual’s friends, home locations, and workplace.

However, AT&T stressed, “The data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as social security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information.”

WIRED says it has spoken to one of the hackers and that it had viewed the deletion video. The publisher also spoke to a security researcher claiming to have served as the go-between for the hacker and AT&T. This researcher reportedly received a fee from AT&T for their services.

We’ve contacted AT&T for comment and will update this piece if we hear back.

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