Autobell’s Car Wash Breach Settlement Pays a Flat $45 — Not an Estimate, No Pro Rata Cut — to Any of 52,714 Notified People Who Files. The Complaint Says They Are Current and Former Workers, Not Customers, at a Chain That Employs About 3,000 a Year. Up to $5,000 With Receipts; Claims Close November 12.

If a notice about Pauken v. Autobell Car Wash, LLC reached you, it concerns the autobell data breach settlement, which a North Carolina state court preliminarily approved on July 8, 2026. The court-approved long form notice says “Autobell’s records indicate that you are a Settlement Class Member and entitled to benefits under the Settlement,” and adds: “You may have received a previous notice directly from Autobell.” The administrator is RG/2 Claims Administration LLC. The official site is AutobellDataSettlement.com, the toll-free number (877) 979-7115, the email AutobellDataSettlement@rg2claims.com, and the mailing address Autobell Data Incident Settlement, c/o RG/2 Claims Administration LLC, P.O. Box 59479, Philadelphia, PA 19102-9479.

The safest route is to type AutobellDataSettlement.com yourself. The claim form asks for your name, mailing address, email address, phone number and a Unique ID — “if known.” A lost notice therefore does not stop you from filing. You can file online, mail a printed form, or email a scan of the completed form to the administrator. The form does not ask for a Social Security number. Under the settlement agreement, class members choose how to be paid: a mailed check or an electronic method such as PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, although the agreement lets the parties offer only some of those.

Who is in the class? The court’s definition is “all natural persons residing in the United States who were provided notice that their personal information was involved in the Data Incident.” The letter that makes someone a class member is Autobell’s own breach notice. According to the complaint, both named plaintiffs received one dated October 22, 2024. If you are unsure whether you got one, the administrator will check for free.

Autobell is a car wash company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its website, as quoted in the complaint, lists more than 85 locations in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. The notice letter attached to the complaint reads: “On April 7, 2024, Autobell experienced a network security incident that impacted some operations.” After a forensic review, the letter continues, Autobell “discovered on September 24, 2024, that between April 1, 2024 and April 7, 2024, certain information stored on our network may have been accessed and/or acquired by an unauthorized individual.” For the two named plaintiffs, the letters listed full name, Social Security number, account number and routing number. The settlement notice says only that the files “may have contained personal information such as names and Social Security numbers.” Notice went to approximately 52,714 individuals, according to the settlement agreement.

The headline number leaves out one detail. The complaint states: “Plaintiffs and the Class Members are current or former employees of Autobell. Autobell employs approximately 3,000 people annually.” 52,714 is more than seventeen times that annual figure (our arithmetic). Neither the complaint nor the settlement says how many years of records the files covered. The gap suggests they reached far back into former staff, but that is our reading, not a finding in the case.

The case began in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, where two suits were consolidated and a consolidated complaint was filed on January 30, 2025. According to the settlement agreement, on July 22, 2025 the court denied Autobell’s motion to dismiss except for the claim under North Carolina’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. After a full-day mediation with Bruce A. Friedman, the parties agreed that state court was the right forum. They dismissed the federal case and refiled in Mecklenburg County Superior Court on February 2, 2026. The agreement is dated March 14, 2026. Autobell denies wrongdoing, and no court has decided who is right.

Every class member can claim two years of three-bureau credit monitoring. The notice lists real-time monitoring of the credit file at three bureaus, dark web scanning, public record monitoring, medical identity monitoring, identity theft insurance with no deductible, and access to fraud resolution agents. It is not automatic: you tick the box on the claim form.

On top of that, you pick one of two cash routes. Documented losses, up to $5,000: bank, card, overdraft and returned-check fees; the cost of replacing a driver’s license or other ID; per-minute phone or per-use data charges; fees for credit reports or monitoring; and losses from identity theft or fraud. Third-party documentation such as receipts is required. “Self-prepared documents by themselves are not sufficient.” Time spent can be added: up to four hours at $25 an hour, attested under penalty of perjury, counted inside the $5,000 cap. That is $100 at most.

Or a flat $45, no proof: “In lieu of submitting a claim for Documented Unreimbursed Losses and/or Time Spent, Settlement Class Members may choose to instead receive a one-time cash payment of $45.00.” You cannot take both.

What makes this settlement different from many breach settlements this autumn is what the documents do not contain. There is no settlement fund, and we found no overall cap and no pro rata clause in the agreement. The only limit on payments is per person: $5,000 for documented losses. Autobell pays what the approved claims add up to, and it pays the administrator, the lawyers and the class representatives separately. The $45 is therefore a set amount, not an estimate that shrinks if many people file. In the DAP Health settlement, for comparison, the no-proof $25 is an estimate paid last out of a fixed fund.

If all 52,714 notified people claimed the $45, the payments would total $2,372,130 (our arithmetic). Only people who file are paid, so the real total depends on how many claim, and the documents give no estimate. Class Counsel — Mariya Weekes of Milberg PLLC and Jessica A. Wilkes of Federman & Sherwood — will ask the court for attorneys’ fees and costs of up to $350,000, plus service awards of $2,500 for each of the two class representatives, Reece Pauken and Jamal Joe. The agreement says Autobell pays those amounts. Because there is no common fund, they do not come out of anyone’s $45. For scale, $350,000 is roughly the flat payment to about 7,778 claimants (our arithmetic).

The settlement also includes a promise that class members will not see: Autobell will give Class Counsel a confidential cybersecurity declaration about its security practices since the incident and the cost of remedial measures for the next three years.

October 13, 2026 is the last day to opt out or to object. An opt-out request “must be submitted, postmarked, or emailed by October 13, 2026” and must include the case name, your full name, mailing address, phone number, email address if any, your personal signature and the words “Request for Exclusion.” November 9, 2026 is the final approval hearing, set for 10:00 a.m. in the preliminary approval order, at the Mecklenburg County Superior Court, 832 East Fourth Street, Charlotte. November 12, 2026 is the claims deadline, online or postmarked by mail. The claim window stays open three days after the hearing.

No payment date has been set. The notice says benefits are distributed if the court grants final approval and after any appeals are resolved. Under the agreement, once the settlement becomes effective, Autobell has 10 days to fund the payments, and the administrator pays within 21 days of the Effective Date. Monitoring enrollment instructions follow within 30 days. Checks must be cashed within 90 days. After that they are void, and nothing is reissued.