Europol Dismantles Major SIM Box Cybercrime-as-a-Service Network, Five Arrested
Published
- International operation: A coordinated law enforcement action led to the arrest of 7 individuals and the takedown of a massive CaaS platform.
- Significant seizures: Authorities seized approximately 1,200 SIM box devices, 40,000 active SIM cards, and dismantled 5 servers.
- Widespread fraud: The network facilitated thousands of cyber fraud cases, including phishing, smishing, and investment scams.
A significant international law enforcement operation has resulted in a major Europol cybercrime takedown, dismantling a sophisticated network that offered criminal services on a global scale. It targeted a highly organized SIM-box fraud network that provided the technical infrastructure for a wide range of illegal activities
Scale of the Illicit Network and Crimes Enabled
The criminal enterprise offered a cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) model, allowing perpetrators worldwide to rent telephone numbers from over 80 countries. The operation successfully neutralized the network's core infrastructure.Â
An action day on October 10, 2025, in Latvia led to the arrest of seven individuals, the seizure of approximately 1,200 SIM box devices that were operating 40,000 active SIM cards, and the dismantling of five servers supporting the illicit operation, with hundreds of thousands more cards also confiscated.
This service played a crucial role in creating over 49 million fake online accounts for social media and communication platforms, effectively obscuring the identities and locations of the criminals using them.Â
The websites used to market the service, gogetsms[.]com and apisim[.]com, have been taken down and replaced with law enforcement splash pages.
The infrastructure facilitated numerous serious offenses and scams, including large-scale phishing and smishing crimes, as well as investment fraud, extortion, migrant smuggling, and the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Some perpetrators specialized in fraud on second-hand marketplaces, others bet on the daughter/son scam via WhatsApp, while several tried to convince their mostly Russian-speaking victims of being legitimate police officers.Â
Financial Damage
The financial damage is estimated to be in the millions, with Austria alone reporting losses of approximately EUR 4.5 million from over 1,700 individual fraud cases linked to the service.
In addition to the technical infrastructure, authorities froze over EUR 431,000 in bank accounts and USD 333,000 in crypto accounts linked to the suspects.Â
The operation, codenamed SIMCARTEL, was a joint effort between authorities in Austria, Estonia, and Latvia, with support from Europol and Eurojust. The investigation into the full extent of the network's criminal activities is ongoing.
This month, the U.S. Secret Service dismantled a large network of electronic devices across the New York tristate area, seizing more than 300 co-located SIM servers and an estimated 100,000 SIM cards from multiple sites.
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