NYC iPhone Fraud Epidemic Solved! AT&T Web Site Selling iPhones to New Yorkers Again.

Looks like AT&T has gone and “modified its promotion and distribution channels” again. Either that or the carrier has a better handle on the “online fraudulent activity” that prevented it from selling Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone online to customers with New York City zip codes.

The company’s Web site is once again accepting iPhone orders from potential customers living in Manhattan. I was just able to initiate two orders for the iPhone 3GS using New York city zip codes (click on image below to enlarge)–one in midtown (10016), the other in East Harlem (10029).

This not 24 hours after company representatives claimed that AT&T (T) wasn’t selling iPhones online to New Yorkers because of “online fraudulent activity” or because AT&T “periodically chooses to modify [its] promotions and distribution channels” or some combination of the two.

That AT&T reversed course so quickly and without comment suggests this entire incident may have been one of those middle-of-the-org-chart missteps that went unnoticed by upper management until it blew up in the media.

What’s perhaps most astonishing about the episode is how willing people were to buy into the idea, put forth by Consumerist, that AT&T had actually stopped selling the iPhone online in Manhattan because of data congestion issues. That such an idea is even plausible to people is truly a sad comment on the quality of AT&T’s network in the city.

I’ve asked AT&T for comment and will update here if the company can break away from the periodic modification of its promotions and distribution channels long enough to give me one.