Europol dismantles Latvian platform servicing phishing scammers, investment fraud

Europol has announced the disruption of a sophisticated cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) ￰0￱ to the agency, the Friday operation caused a dent in a platform that operated a SIM farm and enabled its sets to carry out diverse crimes ranging from phishing scams to investment ￰1￱ a statement by the agency, the operation, dubbed Operation SIMCARTEL, saw 26 strategic searches carried out in a coordinated law enforcement ￰2￱ mentioned that the operation resulted in the arrest of seven suspects and the seizure of 1,200 SIM box devices, which contained more than 40,000 active SIM ￰3￱ of the detained suspects were Latvian ￰4￱ Latvian police mentioned in an announcement that the platform was related to anonymous communication and payments, impacting more than 3,200 people in different ￰5￱ apprehends suspects in CaaS platform disruption Europol also claimed that it dismantled five servers tied to the operation, taking over two websites, ￰6￱ and apisim.

com, that were used to advertise the ￰7￱ websites have since been branded with a banner stating that it has been seized by ￰8￱ addition, four luxury vehicles were confiscated, with €431,000 ($502,000) in suspects’ bank accounts and €266,000 ($310,000) in their cryptocurrency accounts frozen by ￰9￱ operation consisted of law enforcement from countries like Austria, Latvia, Finland, and Estonia, in collaboration with Europol and ￰10￱ its statement, Europol said the criminal network was responsible for more than 1,700 individual cyber fraud cases in Austria and 1,500 cases in ￰11￱ agency also claimed that victims have lost a cumulative €4.5 million ($5.25 million) and €420,000 ($489,000) in the two countries, respectively, due to their services and operations.

“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 ￰12￱ network offered telephone numbers registered to people from over 80 countries for use in criminal activities, including setting up fake social media accounts on different platforms to obscure the location and original identity of the ￰13￱ enforcement details the scale of the operation In total, Europol claimed that the service enabled the creation of more than 49 million accounts ￰14￱ accounts are then used to carry out wide-scale phishing campaigns or to trick victims into investing in fake or bogus trading ￰15￱ type of scam involved contacting people and posing as their ￰16￱ claim that they now have a new number and ask them to transfer funds, which are always in four digits, to a new number to quickly sort out an ￰17￱ of the offenses that the platform facilitated included extortion , migrant smuggling, and the distribution of child sexual abuse ￰18￱ to snapshots from the Internet Archive, GoGetSMS was dubbed as a platform where people could get “fast and secure temporary phone numbers.” The platform promised potential customers up to 10 million numbers to choose from and noted that they could receive verification from over 160 online ￰19￱ its website, GoGetSMS also provides users with the ability to monetize existing SIM cards by turning them into powerful assets to generate passive income using specialized ￰20￱ way, users earn revenue for every SMS message that is sent to ￰21￱ have also complained that they have been scammed by the platform.

“Tried multiple times, wasted both time and ￰22￱ is completely unresponsive – no help, no refund, nothing,” a user said on Trustpilot. Don’t just read crypto ￰23￱ ￰24￱ to our newsletter. It's free .