Europol reported on a large-scale operation codenamed SIMCARTEL, during which police in Latvia, Austria, and Estonia, with the support of Europol and Eurojust, shut down an international SIM farm used in fraudulent schemes around the world.
During the operation on 10 October 2025, seven people were detained, 1200 SIM boxes, 40000 active SIM cards, and hundreds of thousands of additional cards stored in reserve were seized. Law enforcement also shut down gogetsms.com and apisim.com services, which provided phone number rental services from more than 80 countries.
In addition to the servers, the police froze €431,000 in bank accounts, seized $333,000 in cryptocurrency, and four premium cars.
According to the investigation, around 49–50 million fake accounts were created on various online platforms using this infrastructure. The numbers were actively used in phishing emails, investment and crypto scams, ‘bank security service’ schemes, blackmail, and other forms of social engineering.
In Austria, approximately 1700 cases of fraud are being investigated, with total damages amounting to around €4.5 million, while in Latvia there are around 1500 cases with damages amounting to approximately €420,000
- Learn more: Europol’s website
