Pierluigi Paganini
October 18, 2025
Europol’s “SIMCARTEL” operation dismantled an illegal SIM-box network tied to over 3,200 fraud cases and €4.5M in losses. The service used 1,200 SIM-boxes with 40,000 SIM cards to supply phone numbers for phishing, investment scams, impersonation, and extortion schemes.
On 10 October 2025, law enforcement arrested five cybercriminals of Latvian nationality and seized the infrastructure used by the criminal organization.
“During the operation codenamed ‘SIMCARTEL’, law enforcement arrested two further suspects, took down five servers and seized 1 200 SIM box devices alongside 40 000 active SIM cards.” reads the press release published by Europol. “Investigators from Austria, Estonia and Latvia, together with their colleagues at Europol und Eurojust, were able to attribute to the criminal network more than 1 700 individual cyber fraud cases in Austria and 1 500 in Latvia, with a total loss of several million euros. The financial loss in Austria alone amounts to around EUR 4.5 million, as well as EUR 420 000 in Latvia.”
The Europol, with the help of the Shadowserver Foundation, seized the websites gogetsms.com and apisim.com, used by the organization to rent phone numbers from 80+ countries for fake account creation, helping criminals hide their identities.
Below are some figures related to Europol’s “SIMCARTEL” operation:
The investigation is still ongoing, and authorities are still uncovering the network’s scale: over 49 million online accounts were created using the illegal SIM service, causing millions of euros in damages.
The dismantled SIM-box network enabled numerous serious crimes by masking criminals’ identities, making phishing, smishing, and large-scale fraud possible. Phishing and smishing scams trick victims into revealing passwords or bank data through fake messages. The service also supported extortion, migrant smuggling, and child sexual abuse material distribution. Criminals used fake accounts for second-hand marketplace fraud, daughter–son WhatsApp scams, investment fraud, fake shops and bank sites, and impersonation of police officers, often deceiving victims into urgent payments or personal visits to steal money.
“The now-dismantled criminal network undertook great efforts to provide its criminal clients with the requested service. This included the professional design and appearance of its website, which was taken offline by law enforcement during the action day.” continues the press release. “There was also the massive organisational effort of multiple accomplices acquiring thousands of SIM cards in almost 80 countries worldwide to be rented to other criminal organisations.”
One of the main suspects in the dismantled SIM-box network was already under investigation in Estonia for arson and extortion.
Law enforcement agencies from Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia joined Operation SIMCARTEL
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