Operation SIMCARTEL, a multinational investigation supported by Europol and Eurojust, disrupted a cybercrime-as-a-service marketplace in Latvia on October 10, 2025. National authorities arrested seven suspects overall—five during the Latvia action day—and seized about 1,200 SIM-box devices, 40,000 active SIM cards, hundreds of thousands of additional cards and five servers. Investigators linked the infrastructure to more than 3,200 fraud cases in Austria and Latvia, while Europol said customers had used it to create more than 49 million online accounts.
That last figure is not a count of confirmed victims. It is the number of accounts reportedly created through the service; investigators were still assessing how many were fraudulent or used successfully. The central story is an illicit phone-number and account-creation supply chain that other criminal groups could rent, rather than one gang personally running every scam.
What Europol’s operation actually dismantled
Authorities targeted a commercial-looking online service that allegedly sold access to phone numbers and SIM cards from more than 80 countries. Europol identified the sites as gogetsms.com and apisim.com; law enforcement replaced them with seizure notices.
The service gave criminal customers a way to obtain numbers, create accounts at scale and separate their identities from the activity. That makes it a cybercrime-as-a-service operation: an infrastructure provider serving multiple fraud crews, not simply a call centre making scam calls.
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How a SIM farm enables fraud
SIM boxes and SIM farms
A SIM box is hardware containing multiple SIM cards that can send or receive calls and text messages over mobile networks. A SIM farm is a larger deployment of those devices and cards. A UK government consultation describes a SIM farm as a device containing more than four SIM cards, but that is a UK policy definition, not a universal legal rule. Multi-SIM equipment can have limited legitimate uses; in this case, investigators alleged that the scale and purpose supported fraud and identity concealment. See the UK government consultation.
The criminal workflow
- Customers obtained real phone numbers, sometimes with a local-looking or foreign country code.
- They used those numbers to register large numbers of social-media, messaging, marketplace or other online accounts.
- When platforms blocked a number or account, criminals could move to another one.
- The resulting accounts were used for impersonation, phishing, fake shops, investment pitches and other fraud, while the infrastructure provider handled much of the telecommunications layer.
This is different from SIM swapping. A SIM farm supplies many numbers and devices; SIM swapping transfers one victim’s existing number to an attacker’s SIM. It is also different from caller-ID spoofing, which can make a call appear to come from another number without using that number’s physical SIM.
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Scams investigators connected to the service
Family-member impersonation
A fraudster sends a WhatsApp or similar message claiming to be a son or daughter with a new number and an urgent problem. The request for money is designed to trigger emotion before the recipient verifies it through a known number or in person.
Marketplace fraud
Criminals created accounts on second-hand marketplaces and used messages or phishing pages to steal payments or credentials from buyers and sellers.
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Investment fraud
Victims were directed to fake investment opportunities. Europol also described cases in which criminals used remote-access software to take control of a victim’s device.
Fake shops and banking sites
Numbers supplied by the service appeared in contact details, legal notices and communications associated with fraudulent shops and banking websites.
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Police impersonation and other alleged offences
Europol said some customers impersonated police officers, used forged identification and collected money in person. It also said the service facilitated offences including extortion, migrant smuggling and distribution of child sexual abuse material. Those descriptions concern activity allegedly enabled for customers; an arrest is not a conviction, and the announcement does not attribute every customer’s conduct to every suspect.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Scale of the seizure and investigation
| Measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Action day | October 10, 2025, in Latvia |
| Total suspects arrested | 7 (five on the action day, two additional suspects) |
| Searches | 26 |
| SIM-box devices | Approximately 1,200 |
| Active SIM cards in devices | Approximately 40,000 |
| Additional SIM cards | Hundreds of thousands |
| Servers | 5 |
| Phone-number countries offered | More than 80 |
| Accounts created through the service | More than 49 million |
| Fraud cases attributed in Austria | More than 1,700 |
| Fraud cases attributed in Latvia | About 1,500 |
| Reported losses | About €4.5 million in Austria and €420,000 in Latvia |
| Funds frozen | €431,000 in bank accounts and $333,000 in cryptocurrency |
| Luxury vehicles seized | 4 |
These figures come from Europol’s official announcement. Authorities from Austria, Estonia, Latvia and Finland worked with Europol and Eurojust; arrests and searches were carried out by national authorities in Latvia. ITPro provides additional reporting on the participating agencies and seizures at its October 20, 2025 report.
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What “49 million accounts” does—and does not—mean
Europol’s number refers to accounts created using the service. It does not establish that 49 million people were scammed, that every account was fake, that all accounts stayed active, or that each account belonged to a unique user. It also does not mean the seven arrested suspects personally operated every account.
The firmer measure is the more than 3,200 fraud cases investigators attributed in Austria and Latvia, with losses of roughly €4.92 million across those two jurisdictions. Those are not a complete worldwide damage estimate; the full scale was still being investigated.
What the takedown means for victims and consumers
Removing servers, SIM boxes, websites and funds disrupts a major supplier, but it cannot automatically undo transfers, delete accounts created by customers, remove copied personal data, or clean malware and remote-access tools from victims’ devices. Criminal groups may seek replacement suppliers, virtual-number services, compromised accounts or spoofing platforms. The UK consultation notes that fraudsters can also adapt to related tools for spoofed calls, recorded messages and one-time-password interception.
Warning signs to act on
- Verify a “new number” family message using a number you already trust or an in-person conversation.
- Do not click unexpected text-message links or enter bank details on a page reached from one.
- Never install remote-access software because an unsolicited caller claims to be from a bank, police force or technical-support team.
- Treat a local-looking country code as a clue, not proof of identity; this service reportedly offered numbers from many countries.
- If you paid or disclosed credentials, contact your bank immediately, change passwords from a trusted device and enable multifactor authentication, preferably with an authenticator app or security key where available.
- Preserve screenshots, numbers, URLs, payment records and message details, then report the incident to the platform, carrier, bank and your national fraud-reporting authority.
What happens next
Investigators can now examine the seized servers, SIM cards and customer records to identify additional users, connect more cases and trace frozen money. Further arrests, notifications or prosecutions should be treated as developments only when authorities officially announce them. The operation is a significant supply-chain disruption, not proof that SIM-farm-enabled fraud or impersonation scams have ended.
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