Europol Dismantles SIM Farm Network Powering 49 Million Fake Accounts Worldwide
Europol on Friday announced the disruption of a sophisticated cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that operated a SIM farm and enabled its customers to carry out a broad spectrum of crimes ranging from phishing to investment fraud.
The coordinated law enforcement effort, dubbed Operation SIMCARTEL, saw 26 searches carried out, resulting in the arrest of seven suspects and the seizure of 1,200 SIM box devices, which contained 40,000 active SIM cards. Five of those detained are Latvian nationals.
In addition, five servers were dismantled and two websites (gogetsms.com and apisim.com) advertising the service were taken over on October 10, 2025, to display a seizure banner. Separately, four luxury vehicles were confiscated, and €431,000 ($502,000) in suspects’ bank accounts and €266,000 ($310,000) in their cryptocurrency accounts were frozen.
The infrastructure offered telephone numbers registered to people from over 80 countries for use in criminal activities, including setting up fake accounts on social media and communication platforms with the primary goal of obscuring their original identity and location. In all, the service enabled the creation of more than 49 million online accounts.