20.10.2025
2 min
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Europol, together with the police of Latvia, Austria, Estonia and Finland, carried out Operation SIMCARTEL, dismantling an international SIM farm that helped create over 49 million fake accounts for phishing, financial scams and cybercrime. During the raids, over 1,200 SIM boxes were seized, 7 suspects were arrested, hundreds of thousands of euros were blocked in accounts and the services GoGetSMS and ApiSim were shut down. This operation became one of the largest in the field of combating anonymous telecommunications platforms in Europe.
Operation SIMCARTEL was the result of joint actions by the police of Latvia, Austria, Estonia, Finland, as well as coordination with Europol and Eurojust. Five Latvian citizens were among the detainees.
The criminal network provided its clients with the opportunity to anonymously use phone numbers from more than 80 countries, registering accounts on social networks and messengers with their help. In total, according to investigators, the platform created more than 49 million accounts that were used for:
phishing and smishing campaigns (mass SMS fraud),
financial scams and “investment” schemes,
impersonating relatives on messengers (including WhatsApp) to extort money from victims,
extortion, migrant smuggling and even the distribution of child sexual abuse materials.
The services GoGetSMS[.]com and ApiSim[.]com, which were at the heart of the scheme, advertised themselves as “fast and secure temporary numbers”. Their infrastructure allowed not only to buy numbers for verification, but also to monetize their own SIM cards – receiving a profit for each received SMS.
The investigation also resulted in the seizure of 4 luxury cars and the blocking of accounts with over €431,000 in banks and €266,000 in cryptocurrencies.
Similar SIM farms have become the center of the “shadow infrastructure” of cybercrime in recent years. They allow anonymizing online activities, bypassing platform restrictions and scaling fake accounts for botnets. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Finland became one of the key regions for “anonymizing services”. Europol has repeatedly warned that SIM farms are used not only for spam, but also for election interference, disinformation, and financing fraudulent schemes in the crypto space.
The elimination of SIMCARTEL demonstrates the growing effectiveness of international cooperation in the fight against cybercrime. However, experts warn that the SIM-as-a-Service market is only expanding, and new networks are emerging in place of destroyed ones. It is important that users are critical of “temporary numbers” and never transfer their SIM cards to third-party services — even if they promise “passive income.”
