Phishing fraudsters used SIM box to fleece hundreds of victims, police allege | jennynoise
An alleged fraud syndicate operating out of homes in Sydney’s northern suburbs used a SIM box to send hundreds of thousands of automated text messages containing links to fake banking and telecommunication websites where victims were prompted to enter their details, police claim.
The arrests came after federal cybercrime investigators launched Operation Iasion last September to investigate who was behind a phishing scam that police allege had been targeting customers of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Telstra, since 2018. It’s alleged the messages were sent out automatically through the SIM box operated from a home in Ryde and other properties.
But on Wednesday, a search warrant at the home of Ryde man Robert Salopek turned up more than $20,000 in cash and electronic storage devices allegedly containing more than 500 fraudulent identity documents in the names of numerous victims, police said.Officers also seized multiple mobile phones, an encrypted desktop computer and a Huawei internet dongle, which they allege was used in the scam.
Cybercrime expert Simon Smith said large-scale SIM boxes were “quite alarming”, in that “it’s very easy to get a temporary throw-away SIM or a hundred” and write a few lines of code to generate a swath of phone numbers for the device to target.
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