Urban One’s $675,000 Data Breach Settlement Won Final Approval on September 25: About 13,778 People, $48.99 a Head, and a No-Proof Payment Capped at $500 That the Fund Can Pay in Full to No More Than About 890 of Them. Claims Close October 12.

If a postcard about the urban one data incident settlement reached you, that is the form the court-approved notice takes; here is how to check it. Judge Xinis appointed Simpluris as settlement administrator in her April 30, 2026 preliminary approval order, and the settlement agreement requires notice by U.S. mail as a postcard with a tear-off claim form. The return address is Urban One Data Incident Settlement, c/o Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 25226, Santa Ana, CA 92799-9958. The official site is UrbanOneDataIncident.com; the administrator answers at (833) 360-6906 (toll-free, 24/7) and info@UrbanOneDataIncident.com. Typing the address into your browser yourself is the safe route.

To file online you need the Unique ID and PIN printed at the top of your notice. Lost it? The claim page says to email the administrator with your full name and mailing address to have them sent again. The paper claim form, downloadable from the site, asks for your name, address, email, phone, the Unique ID “if known”, your choice of benefits and a signature under penalty of perjury. It does not ask for a Social Security number or a bank account number. You can mail the paper form or email a scan of it; paper filers are paid by check, and the digital options — PayPal, Venmo or Zelle — are offered only when you file on the website.

Do not confuse the settlement notice with the letter that started it. Urban One’s breach letter, dated April 18, 2025 and filed as Exhibit 1 to the complaint, came from a return-mail address in Claysburg, Pennsylvania and offered 24 months of Experian IdentityWorks three-bureau monitoring with an enrollment deadline of July 31, 2025, long past. The settlement’s CyEx monitoring is a separate, new benefit that you claim on the form.

Who is covered, in the court’s words: “All individuals residing in the United States whose Personal Information was potentially compromised in the Data Incident discovered by Defendant in March 2025, including all those individuals who received notice of the Data Incident.” Excluded are the presiding judges and their families, Urban One itself, and anyone who opted out. In practice this is a workforce case: Urban One’s letter described the data as “personally identifiable information related to employees,” the plaintiff is a former employee, and the final approval order describes the claims as concerning “the sensitive information of current and former employees.”

Two slips on the website are worth knowing so they do not throw you. The online claim page says the incident was discovered “in May 2025”; the agreement, the notice and both court orders say March 2025. And the FAQ ends the documented-loss window on August 31, 2026, while the notice and the claim form run it to October 12, 2026 — more on that below.

Urban One, Inc. is a Maryland corporation headquartered at 1010 Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring; the complaint lists its brands as TV One, CLEO TV, Radio One, Reach Media, iOne Digital, One Solution and R1 Digital. Its April 2025 letter describes the urban one data breach this way: “Beginning on February 13, 2025, an unauthorized third party gained access to our network through a sophisticated social engineering campaign, which led to the unauthorized exfiltration of company data, including employee personal information.” The company says it became aware on March 15, 2025, notified law enforcement, and on March 30, 2025 its forensic investigation identified that employee information had been obtained. The letter lists “your full name, home address(es), Social Security number, direct deposit information, and W-2 information.”

The complaint adds allegations that Urban One has not confirmed in any document we read: that the ransomware group Cactus claimed the attack on its leak site around March 12, 2025, said it had taken 2.5 TB of data including payroll files and employee records, and posted sample documents; and that Urban One brought in the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Those are the plaintiff’s allegations, not findings of the court.

Gomian Konneh, a former Urban One employee from Philadelphia who says the notice reached her on or around April 18, 2025, filed the class action on May 5, 2025, 17 days after the letter’s date. She sued for negligence, negligence per se, breach of implied contract, invasion of privacy, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty and a declaratory judgment. The parties asked the court on June 30, 2025 to pause the case for mediation, and on September 17, 2025 they reached a settlement before retired judge Dennis J. Burke of ADR Systems. Judge Xinis granted preliminary approval on April 30, 2026 and final approval on September 25, 2026, the day of the hearing. Urban One denies any wrongdoing, and the final order says expressly that the court made no finding of liability.

How many people are in the class: the agreement records Urban One’s representation that it “consists of approximately 13,778 individuals.” The complaint, written before that count existed, said only that notices had gone to residents of Massachusetts, Texas, Maryland and Pennsylvania, with more expected.

Under the urban one data breach settlement, everyone in the class can add three years of credit monitoring. For cash you pick Option A or Option B — not both.

Option A — Documented Losses and Lost Time, up to $10,000 combined. Documented losses cover out-of-pocket costs from identity theft, fraud or tax problems, fees for credit reports, credit monitoring or credit freezes, replacing IDs, and postage. The agreement requires third-party documentation and a loss that was “more likely than not caused by the Data Incident”; notes you write yourself can support receipts but are not enough on their own, and anything already reimbursed is out. Lost time pays $25 an hour for up to 15 hours ($375). The first four hours ($100) need only a short description of what you did, such as changing passwords or checking accounts; the other 11 hours ($275) require third-party proof of tax-related problems caused by the breach. Lost time counts toward the $10,000 cap.

Option B — Alternative Cash Payment, up to $500, no proof. The notice says: “It is expected that money will remain in the Settlement Fund after all expenses and all other benefits have been paid. This remaining money will be divided equally between everyone who claims a pro rata Cash Payment, with a payment of up to $500.00.” So $500 is a ceiling, not a promise. If money is still left after everyone is paid, or because payments go uncashed, the agreement adds a supplemental pro rata payment capped at $100 per person, paid only if it would come to at least $5; whatever remains after that goes to the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University.

Credit monitoring: three years of CyEx Financial Shield Total, with monitoring through all three bureaus and $1 million in insurance, according to the notice, the claim form and the website. One caution from the fine print: the agreement’s own monitoring paragraph also says the provider will serve claimants “for a period of one year from the date of activation.” Every document sent to the class says three years; if your activation code covers less, that sentence is the reason, and the administrator is the place to ask. Codes are due by email within 14 days after the settlement takes effect and stay usable for 180 days.

Which window counts for losses? The notice and the claim form say losses must have occurred “between March 15, 2025, and October 12, 2026”; the website FAQ and claim page say through August 31, 2026. The agreement itself only requires that a loss came after the incident. If you claim a September or October 2026 expense, include the documents and keep copies.

The class is small, and that drives the math. $675,000 across approximately 13,778 people is $48.99 per class member, by our arithmetic. The court awarded $223,727.50 in attorneys’ fees and costs combined and a $5,000 service award to Konneh, which leaves $446,272.50 — $32.39 per class member — before Simpluris’s administration costs, taxes, Option A claims and credit monitoring, none of which the documents we read put a number on. (The agreement itself names two figures: 33.33 percent, or $224,977.50, in its definitions, and a cap of $223,727.50 including costs in its fee section; the notice and the award use the lower one.)

The agreement fixes the order of payment: administration and taxes, the service award, fees and costs, Option A claims, credit monitoring, and only then Option B. If documented-loss claims ever exceeded the money available, they would be cut pro rata to half of the net fund, with the rest going to lost time and then to Option B.

Our scenarios divide the $446,272.50 by the number of Option B claims and stop at the $500 cap. Real payments will be lower, because administration, monitoring and Option A claims are paid first. No claim count has been published: the agreement has Simpluris report claims rates to the lawyers, not to the public.

What this means for the choice between the two options: if you have no receipts, Option A’s no-proof part is worth at most $100 (four hours of lost time), while Option B is capped at $500 and, even if one class member in ten files for it, works out to about $324 before those other costs, by our arithmetic. If you do have documented losses above that range, Option A is paid ahead of Option B; it shrinks only if documented claims together exceed what is left in the fund.

As of September 27, 2026, the court has ruled and one deadline is still open.

October 12, 2026 is a Monday and a federal holiday — Columbus Day on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s calendar. If you file on paper, mail it the week before rather than counting on a postmark that day, or file online.

What was decided, and whether it is over: the court approved the settlement, awarded the fees and service award, dismissed the case with prejudice and directed the clerk to close it. The settlement is not final until the time to appeal runs out; under the agreement, the Effective Date is one business day after that. By our count the 30-day appeal window ends on October 26, 2026 (the 30th day falls on a Sunday), putting the Effective Date around October 27. Cash is due “no later than 45 days after the Effective Date” — around December 11, 2026 if nobody appeals; an appeal would push every date back. Paper checks expire 60 days after they are issued, and the administrator may reissue one that goes uncashed.

If you saw August 31: some write-ups, including classaction.org’s June 17 article and ClaimDepot’s listing (last updated August 31, 2026), gave August 31, 2026 as the claim deadline. The notice, the claim form and the administrator’s website all say October 12, 2026, and the Internet Archive’s copy of the site’s dates from July 20, 2026 already shows October 12. On the website, August 31 survives only as the end of the documented-loss window in the FAQ.

Contact: Simpluris, (833) 360-6906 (toll-free, 24/7), info@UrbanOneDataIncident.com, Urban One Data Incident Settlement, c/o Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 25226, Santa Ana, CA 92799-9958. The court’s notice asks class members not to contact the court or the clerk. Class counsel: Brittany Resch of Strauss Borrelli PLLC. Urban One’s counsel: Sarah Sears of McDonald Hopkins LLC.