After calling into AT&T again, they tried to say it was Verizon's issue. My buddy requested a letter in writing to present to Verizon saying such. The technician said she wanted to talk to her supervisor, and in 10 minutes it was fixed.
The number was blacklisted. I questioned this at the very begnining of this process and I was told that couldn't be done at the network level, only on the device level. Well that wasn't true I guess.