Euro cops take down cybercrime network with 49M fake accounts

[devjab]

I don't think this comment will contribute much, so please forgive that, but calling a "Collaboration between Europol and the Shadowserver Foundation" for "Euro cops" is probably the most Australian thing I've ever seen on the entire internet.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/cybe...

[mrtksn]

I enjoyed the title more that I want to admit TBH :)

In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police but when its a "Euro" thing it feels much better.

The online narrative may make you think that "Europe" is a dirty word(chat control, cookie banner, regulations, fines etc), but its actually much more pure than any local politics and much much less divisive. The "Euro cops" phrase gives me the feeling of bunch of police officers that are not particularly fun at parties but are definitely not corrupt.

[isoprophlex]

In my mind "euro cops" holds overtones of some a late-90s track-suit-and-nike shoes, bald shaven gabber rave robocop-from-amsterdam pastiche

[username135]

Glad I'm not the only one. Euro Cops!

[KronisLV]

> The coordinated takedown, codenamed Operation SIMCARTEL, took place on October 10 in Latvia, as part of a joint investigation by police in the Baltic nation, Austria, Estonia and Finland.

Not the best way to see my country in the news, but oh well.

That said, I wish I could reasonably do something similar to what's possible with e-mails: where you can have one mailbox per account/company you want to do interaction with, like [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail] and so on. I'd like to have one phone number per company or whatever that I have to interact with, so that if they sell my data to third parties and I suddenly start getting advertisement/spam calls, I can figure out exactly who was acting badly.

[makeitdouble]

Honest question, how well does it go for for email ?

I did that pretty seriously for a while, and in my case I feel it led to nothing specific. I'd get spam from weird places and shut the address, but that would actually amount to an extremely small amount of the total spam I was getting.

Also my ISP or the phone company was selling away my email and there was no way I'd just block them, nor would they give a shit about my bitching to their customer support.

[nora-puchreiner]

There are much more tech photos in local news media:

https://rus.delfi.lv/57863/criminal/120091647/foto-video-v-h...

[sva_]

> In the raid, authorities seized 1200 SIM boxes, with the devices containing 40,000 active SIM cards

Realistically, wouldn't that look suspicious to a cell tower if 40k sims log in from one location?

[mrtksn]

I bet it looks better in their books to have 40K paying customers more than not having those, so they just ignore it as long as not causing more problems than they are worth it. My guess is that the telcos were making half a million euros a month from these.

[rmbyrro]

Can they know the SIM location precisely? I believe they can only triangulate multiple towers to determine a radius. If they could pinpoint a specific, narrow location, it'd be easier to spot unusual concentration.

[jpalawaga]

Depends. They found one of these in New York but it’s very easy for 10s of thousands onto gather in a relatively small area. For example, New Year’s Eve, sports/concert at msg, regular foot traffic at Times Square, etc. so I think barring even antennas shenanigans, disguising it could be not impossible.

(I also understand they rarely use all active SIMs at the same time but instead rotate through in order to avoid arousing suspicion)

[Nextgrid]

If they mostly received inbound traffic, the carrier actually gets paid for it, so may not have any incentive to stop this. Carriers generally only care when SIM farms place outgoing traffic (it allows them to use cheap/free consumer plans instead of expensive SMS providers).

[lillecarl]

It's not impossible that they have directional antennas pointed at different towers nearby-ish, if you do directional antennas the triangulation thing kinda fails.

Just speculation though, it's more likely they just paid the right people off.

[doublerabbit]

Considering how enriched we are with mobile devices you'd probably already have hundred of thousands logging in from one location.

[padjo]

“Euro Cop” sounds like Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

[petre]

Except Van Damme is no cop.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/04/03/jean-claude-van-...

[rurban]

That's probably the cause why I cannot get an Australian phone number nor data plan for my month long business visit here.

3 different prepaid SIM's cannot get registered with my foreign Austrian passport. Roaming is way too expensive here. Telstra support tells me to call their free support number, nice catch 22. I cannot use my phone, only hotel, company or free wifi. There is no free wifi, because hackers. Telstra website sends my password to my new phone number via SMS, which is not yet activated. Catch 22. Or they just claim unknown error. I've tried all providers.

Telstra customer service gives me a date for a personal visit (so I can actually get my password to finish registration), but then at the date there is no appointment alotted. I got another date, but then my month long visit will be already over.

Every 14 year old Asian kid tries to hack into everything here. If access cards, wifi or web pages. It's the wild east here.

[bmitc]

Did you miss the part of the article where it stated the group was in Latvia and not in an Asian country?

[hofrogs]

These burner phone numbers not exclusively used by criminals, a privacy-minded person would use those to make accounts on services that require a phone number (and sadly, it feels like there's a lot of these lately)

[dewey]

If you look at these companies it's never aimed at the privacy enthusiast use case. They are aiming for mass-sms outreach, anti-bot measures and sell them in bundles of 1000s.

[reconnecting]

I wish one day INTERPOL would share a list of those fake accounts instead of vehicle photos.

[codedokode]

The reason why SIM boxes exist, is because in many countries you cannot buy a SIM card anonymously, and because every site now wants your phone number.

[moscoe]

International police appear to be targeting these massive sim-dependent fraud/scam operations. Probably not difficult to track these hot spots.

[immibis]

This is a legitimate service also used by privacy minded individuals - just like the recent similar raid in the USA. What's the actual crime here?

[whynotmaybe]

Per another article : Europol und Eurojust, were able to attribute to the criminal network more than 1 700 individual cyber fraud cases in Austria and 1 500 in Latvia, with a total loss of several million euros. The financial loss in Austria alone amounts to around EUR 4.5 million, as well as EUR 420 000 in Latvia.

So I guess they were providing legitimate business while doing scams at the same time.

[izacus]

The fact that it was run by actual organized crime group using the SIMs to commit crimes in masse. Article lays it out quite clearly.

[mrtksn]

It's usually the illegitimate use cases that cause problem. According to the article the problem was that they were used for scams.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Network operators have a right to know who is using their pipes.

[devJdeed]

I wonder what people used to do with these fake 41M accounts. I suspect alot for influencing conversations online.

[danjermaus]

I misinterpreted the title and thought the cops used 49M fake accounts to take down the network

[plank]

Yep, I did as well. And visited the site to see how cops used fake accounts...

So... Clickbait title? ;-)

[lisbbb]

Dead Internet Theory

[munchlax]

If websites didn't force insecure SMS 2FA, these services wouldn't be neccesary. It's like we can't have nice things anymore because criminals can't have nice things so you can't have them either.

Try entering a landline whenever you're asked a phone number for your account. They say the number is invalid, which I find insulting because I know my number very well and it's been around for longer than those websites.

And now this article insults me again by saying it's only used for criminal activities.

The gall.

[cout]

Is 49M a lot?

[1oooqooq]

why are taxes being used to moderate Facebook?

[koliber]

When your mom or grandma gets swindled out of her retirement, this will start making sense.

[throw_m239339]

Taxes are used to take down a large criminal network using fake social media accounts.

[AmbroseBierce]

If someone robs a costumer inside a McDonald's do you complain when the cops that arrive and capture the thieves are paid with taxes and not by McDonald's itself?