European law enforcement carried out Operation SIMCARTEL, during which they dismantled a network of SIM farms whose operators managed 1,200 SIM boxes with 40,000 SIM cards. These phone numbers were used for phishing, investment fraud, extortion, and other criminal operations.
It is reported that the SIM farms facilitated more than 3,200 cases of fraud and caused victims losses totaling at least €4.5 million.
According to Europol, the farm operators offered their services through two websites — gogetsms[.]com and apisim[.]com, which are now offline and display a notice about the law enforcement operation.
The dismantling of the infrastructure was the result of joint efforts by Europol and specialists from the Shadowserver Foundation. Law enforcement from Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia also took part in the operation.
The fraudulent service offered phone numbers registered to individuals in more than 80 countries. The numbers were rented out to clients who needed to create and verify fake accounts, allowing them to conceal their real identity and location.
“The criminal network and its infrastructure were technically sophisticated and allowed criminals around the world to use this service to carry out a wide range of telecom-related cybercrimes, as well as other illegal activities,” law enforcement officials say.
According to authorities, the service was used to create more than 49 million fraudulent accounts, and it has already been linked to 1,700 fraud cases in Austria and 1,500 in Latvia.
Among the crimes facilitated by the service are: fraud, extortion, illegal migration, marketplace scams, requests to transfer money via WhatsApp, investment fraud, fake shops and banking websites, as well as impersonation of police officers.
It is reported that during Operation SIMCARTEL, five Latvian citizens and two other suspects were arrested, and the following were seized:
- 1,200 SIM boxes with 40,000 active SIM cards;
- hundreds of thousands of SIM cards;
- five servers and two websites;
- €431,000 ($500,000) in frozen bank accounts and $333,000 in crypto accounts;
- four luxury cars.