Europol on Friday introduced the disruption of a complicated cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that operated a SIM farm and enabled its clients to hold out a broad spectrum of crimes starting from phishing to funding fraud.
The coordinated legislation enforcement effort, dubbed Operation SIMCARTEL, noticed 26 searches carried out, ensuing within the arrest of seven suspects and the seizure of 1,200 SIM box devices, which contained 40,000 energetic SIM playing cards. 5 of these detained are Latvian nationals.
As well as, 5 servers have been dismantled and two web sites (gogetsms[.]com and apisim[.]com) promoting the service was taken over on October 10, 2025, to show a seizure banner. Individually, 4 luxurious autos have been confiscated, and €431,000 ($502,000) in suspects’ financial institution accounts and €266,000 ($310,000) of their cryptocurrency accounts have been frozen.
The nations that participated within the operation comprised authorities from Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Latvia, in collaboration with Europol and Eurojust.
Based on Europol, the prison community has been attributed to greater than 1,700 particular person cyber fraud circumstances in Austria and 1,500 in Latvia, resulting in losses totaling round €4.5 million ($5.25 million) and €420,000 ($489,000) within the two nations, respectively.
“The prison community and its infrastructure have been technically extremely subtle and enabled perpetrators around the globe to make use of this SIM-box service to conduct a variety of telecommunications-related cybercrimes, in addition to different crimes,” the company mentioned.
The infrastructure supplied phone numbers registered to individuals from over 80 nations to be used in prison actions, together with establishing pretend accounts on social media and communication platforms with the first purpose of obscuring their authentic id and site. In all, the service enabled the creation of greater than 49 million on-line accounts.
These accounts have been then used to conduct phishing and smishing assaults and perform monetary fraud by tricking victims into investing their funds in bogus buying and selling schemes. One other concerned contacting potential targets on WhatsApp by posing as their daughter or son, claiming they now have a brand new quantity and asking them to switch cash within the four-figure vary for an emergency.
A few of the different offenses that have been made attainable by way of the platform included extortion, migrant smuggling, and the distribution of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
Based on snapshots captured on the Web Archive, GoGetSMS was marketed as a approach to get “quick and safe momentary cellphone numbers,” with greater than 10 million numbers to select from and obtain verification codes from over 160 on-line providers.
On its web site, GoGetSMS additionally offered the flexibility to monetize present SIM playing cards by turning them into “highly effective property for producing passive revenue” utilizing its “specialised software program,” permitting card homeowners to earn income for each SMS message despatched to them.
On evaluation web site Trustpilot, paid customers have complained of going through points getting maintain of a brief quantity via GoGetSMS, with one consumer claiming that they paid for a U.S. quantity on the platform and didn’t get a working quantity in return. “Tried a number of instances, wasted each money and time. Help is totally unresponsive – no assist, no refund, nothing,” the consumer added.
The Latvian State Police, in a coordinated announcement, said the platform was designed for nameless communication and funds, impacting 3,200 individuals in varied nations.
