European police forces have arrested seven people and dismantled a large-scale cybercrime-as-a-service operation that saw almost 50 million fake online accounts created across social media and communications platforms for fraud purposes.
Seized SIM boxes in Latvia
Latvian Police/Europol
The coordinated takedown, codenamed Operation SIMCARTEL, took place on October 10 in Latvia, as part of a joint investigation by police in the Baltic nation, Austria, Estonia and Finland.
Five Latvian nationals and two additional suspects were arrrested by police.
In the raid, authorities seized 1200 SIM boxes, with the devices containing 40,000 active SIM cards.
Five Internet servers were taken down, along with two websites that had been offering the illegal service, gogetsms.com and apisim.com.
The network operated as a for-hire service, providing temporary telephone numbers from more than 80 countries to criminals who needed to mask their identities whilst committing cybercrimes.
Fraudsters used the service to bypass two-factor authentication systems so as to create vast numbers of fake accounts.
Once created, the bogus accounts served as starting points for various scams including investment fraud, fake online shops, and phishing attacks.
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