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   Massive SIM farm network powering 49 million fake accounts taken apart by   
   Europol   
      
   Date:   
   Mon, 20 Oct 2025 11:08:12 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Seven people were arrested and four luxury cars confiscated in Europol   
   operation.   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   Law enforcement agencies from Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia, together   
   with  Europol, have seized thousands of SIM-box devices and SIM cards used in   
   multiple scam campaigns.    
      
   The police kicked off Operation Simcartel on October 10 in Latvia, carrying   
   out 26 searches, and arresting five people right away, also seizing   
   approximately 1,200 SIM-box devices, 40,000 SIM cards, and five servers with   
   additional infrastructure.    
      
   A SIM-box device is a piece of hardware that holds multiple SIM cards and is   
   used to route international phone calls over local mobile networks to avoid   
   official carrier fees. Criminals (and some businesses) use it to make   
   international calls appear as local ones, bypassing legitimate operators.   
      
   Highly sophisticated actors    
      
   Hundreds of thousands of SIM cards were also seized, Europol added, two   
   websites defaced, and two more people arrested. The forces also seized   
   hundreds of thousands in different currencies (USD and EUR), as well as four   
   luxury vehicles.    
      
   The criminal network and its infrastructure were technically highly   
   sophisticated and enabled perpetrators around the world to use this SIM-box   
   service to conduct a wide range of telecommunications-related cybercrimes, as   
   well as other crimes, Europol explained.    
      
   The criminal enterprise offered phone numbers registered to people from more   
   than 80 countries, and allowed other criminals to set up fake accounts for   
   social media and communication platforms.    
      
   Europol believes that more than 49 million online accounts were created using   
   this criminal enterprise, and managed to attribute it to more than 1,700    
   fraud cases in Austria, and 1,500 in Latvia.    
      
   Total losses are counted in the millions, with financial loss just in Austria   
   amounting to roughly 4.5 million. In Latvia, it was around 420,000.    
      
   The criminal network enabled a multitude of serious crimes, the report    
   further states, including fraud on online second-hand marketplaces,   
   daughter-son scams, investment fraud, fake shops and fake bank websites, and   
   fake police officer scams.    
      
    Via BleepingComputer    
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/massive-sim-farm-network-powering-49-mi   
   llion-fake-accounts-taken-apart-by-europol   
      
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