"Europol on Friday announced the disruption of a sophisticated cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that operated a SIM farm and enabled its customers to carry out a broad spectrum of crimes ranging from phishing to investment fraud. The coordinated law enforcement effort, dubbed Operation SIMCARTEL, saw 26 searches carried out, resulting in the arrest of seven suspects and the seizure of 1,200 SIM box devices, which contained 40,000 active SIM cards. Five of those detained are Latvian nationals."
"In addition, five servers were dismantled and two websites gogetsms[.]com and apisim[.]com) advertising the service was taken over on October 10, 2025, to display a seizure banner. Separately, four luxury vehicles were confiscated, and €431,000 ($502,000) in suspects' bank accounts and €266,000 ($310,000) in their cryptocurrency accounts were frozen. The countries that participated in the operation comprised authorities from Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia, in collaboration with Europol and Eurojust. "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," the agency said."
A coordinated law enforcement operation dismantled a sophisticated cybercrime-as-a-service platform that operated a SIM farm and offered telephone numbers from over 80 countries. The network enabled creation of more than 49 million online accounts used for phishing, smishing, and investment fraud. Authorities executed 26 searches, arrested seven suspects (five Latvian nationals), seized 1,200 SIM box devices containing 40,000 active SIM cards, dismantled five servers, and took over two websites. Four luxury vehicles were confiscated and over €697,000 in bank and cryptocurrency funds were frozen. Austria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Europol, and Eurojust linked the network to thousands of fraud cases and multimillion-euro losses.
Read at The Hacker News
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