A multi-country operation codenamed SIMCARTEL has successfully dismantled a major cybercrime service that powered over 3,000 online scams across Europe. Authorities from Austria, Estonia, and Latvia collaborated to arrest seven suspects and seize critical infrastructure, including servers, domains, and cryptocurrency.
The Cybercrime Infrastructure
The dismantled network provided essential technical capabilities for large-scale fraud, demonstrating the industrialization of modern cybercrime. Investigators seized 1,200 SIM box devices and 40,000 active SIM cards, which formed the backbone of the operation.
These SIM boxes allowed criminals to route calls and messages through multiple phone numbers simultaneously, effectively disguising their true location and identity. The service offered telephone numbers from over 80 countries for illicit activities. According to Eurojust, this infrastructure enabled fraudsters to set up close to 50 million fake accounts on social media and other communication platforms to perpetrate scams, including bank fraud and social engineering attacks.
Global Impact and Financial Loss
The law enforcement action resulted in the arrest of five Latvian suspects in coordinated raids in Latvia, with two additional arrests following the investigation's expansion.
Investigators have attributed more than 1,700 individual fraud cases in Austria and 1,500 cases in Latvia directly to this network. The financial impact is devastating, with confirmed victim losses totaling over €4.9 million across the two countries alone, though the true financial toll is believed to be significantly higher. In Austria, attributed financial losses amounted to approximately €4.5 million.
The Cybercrime as a Service Model
Operation SIMCARTEL highlights the growing Cybercrime as a Service (CaaS) model. Rather than executing the fraud themselves, the arrested suspects allegedly acted as specialized infrastructure providers, charging subscription fees to lower-level criminal clients.
This specialization solves a critical problem for criminals by enabling large-scale fraud operations that require local phone numbers, such as bypassing two-factor authentication or running sophisticated romance scams. Europol stressed that focusing on disrupting this core criminal infrastructure, rather than just individual attackers, is key to achieving a lasting impact against organized cybercrime. Authorities cautioned that cybercriminals will quickly seek new infrastructure and encouraged private sector partners to remain vigilant.
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