Europol Dismantles SIM Farm Network Powering 49 Million Fake Accounts Worldwide

Europol on Friday announced the disruption of a sophisticated cybercrime-as-a-service platform that operated a SIM farm and enabled its customers to carry out a broad spectrum of crimes, including phishing, smishing and various frauds. The operation, named SIMCARTEL, involved 26 searches, leading to seven arrests and the seizure of 1,200 SIM box devices containing 40,000 active SIM cards, with five servers dismantled and two offending websites taken over on 10 October 2025 to display seizure banners.

The countries taking part were Austria, Estonia, Finland and Latvia, in collaboration with Europol and Eurojust, and the Latvian State Police noted the platform was designed for anonymous communication and payments, impacting 3,200 people in various countries. In total, the service enabled the creation of more than 49 million online accounts, which were then used for phishing and smishing as well as other crimes, including extortion and migrant smuggling, and even the distribution of CSAM.

Authorities also confiscated four luxury vehicles and froze €431,000 in suspects’ bank accounts and €266,000 in cryptocurrency. According to Europol, the network has been linked to more than 1,700 individual cyber fraud cases in Austria and 1,500 in Latvia, resulting in reported losses across those two countries of roughly €4.5 million and €420,000 respectively.