The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) announced a large-scale special operation aimed at suppressing illegal activities related to the use of SIM-boxes to activate accounts in social networks, messengers, financial wallets and bank accounts. Actions were carried out in 40 regions of Russia.
According to the press service of the FSB, in March 2024, activities were carried out, as a result of which 612 SIM-boxes and more than 300 thousand SIM-cards were seized. According to the special service, criminal cases have been opened against 30 people under the article on fraud, and two more persons were involved in unauthorized access to "Gosuslugi" accounts.
One of the detainees, who lives in St. Petersburg, provided SIM card activation services in the interests of Ukrainian terrorist organizations.
The official representative of the Russian Interior Ministry Irina Volk noted that 44 defendants were charged with fraud, searches were conducted in 177 criminal cases in 42 subjects of Russia. They found 937 SIM-banks and 11 server stations, as well as seized more than 277 thousand SIM-cards of various operators.
According to a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the total capacity of the seized equipment allowed making more than 40 million fraudulent calls per day. This operation allowed to stop the work of large locations of criminal telephone traffic, which were used for hacker attacks and destabilization of commercial organizations and government agencies.
Earlier, the State Duma proposed to oblige mobile operators to report in advance on the seizure of phone numbers, and a Russian company launched an online service to check for leaked personal data.