Remember last year’s story about a “SIM farm” that was later linked to China? ICE just shut down a whole lot more.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) Homeland Security Investigations carried out a nationwide operation between June 22 and July 10 that dismantled “SIM farms” run by transnational criminal organizations.
SIM (subscriber identity module) farms are systems containing large numbers of SIM cards from different wireless carriers, often housed in banks of cellphones, modems, or specialized devices known as SIM boxes.
These can be used to send and receive bulk messages or calls and often exploit voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to do so. Initially developed for legitimate purposes, the technology has become prominent among organized fraudsters targeting mass audiences through phishing texts, scam calls, and fraudulent online accounts.
The recent nationwide operation, dubbed Operation Signal Break, “dismantled critical command-and-control infrastructure used to perpetrate large-scale telecommunications fraud across the United States,” ICE said in a July 24 statement.
Authorities will now analyze the seized SIM data to identify victims and assess losses caused by such fraud. The illicit proceeds from the fraud, which are suspected to be linked to Chinese transnational criminal organizations and distribution networks, will be traced.
This is expected to support criminal indictments, sanctions targeting national and international infrastructure used in criminal activity, and asset seizures. SIM box operations are estimated to result in losses worth $15 million annually to Americans, according to ICE.
SIM box fraud, “also known as interconnect bypass fraud, is a scheme in which fraudsters reroute international calls to appear as local ones,” a Nov. 8, 2025, post from IT services provider Synaptique said.
For instance, when a foreign national calls someone in the United States, the call is diverted through VOIP to a SIM box in America instead of passing through a legitimate international call gateway. The SIM box then uses one of the local SIM cards to place a new local call to the recipient.
SIM boxes can be used by criminals to communicate in a clandestine manner. Foreign rival states and intelligence agencies can also use SIM boxes in their operations.
In its statement, ICE said that Operation Signal Break mobilized specialized SIM Box Surge Teams composed of criminal analysts, special agents, and computer forensic analysts, surging them to California, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey to tackle SIM farm operations.
“I commend our special agents for their outstanding dedication and teamwork in dismantling illicit telecommunications infrastructure,” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon said in the statement.
“Their relentless pursuit of justice and commitment to protecting the integrity of our communications networks have made our communities safer and sends a clear message to those seeking to exploit our systems to defraud Americans.”
Since 2024, the HSI has seized more than 1,900 SIM boxes, more than 500,000 SIM cards, and in excess of $700,000 in illicit proceeds. It has executed more than 116 federal criminal search warrants. In total, 68 SIM farms used to facilitate fraudulent texts and calls have been disrupted across 15 states. The probes have led to one criminal arrest and 11 administrative arrests.
68 SIM farms seems like a lot. I wonder if some are involved in those spam calls I receive every day on my iPhone, the ones I never pick up, and instead they roll to voicemail and leave a silent 1 second message.
I also note that ICE seems to be involved in a whole lot of cross-border crime enforcement action that have nothing to do with deporting the illegal alien felons Democrats seem to love above citizens…
Tags: Border Controls, California, China, Crime, Florida, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Condon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Operation Signal Break, SIM farm, technology, Texas, Zero Hedge
> I also note that ICE seems to be involved in a whole lot of cross-border crime enforcement action that have nothing to do with deporting the illegal alien felons Democrats seem to love above citizens…
This is probably the C in ICE: Immigration and CUSTOMS Enforcement
All this is downstream from the practice of using phone numbers as personal identifiers. The practice is not secure, was never intended to be secure, and nobody really expects it to be secure. But it is a cheap and shitty way for Big Tech to fend off sybil attacks. Before the roll-out of STIR/SHAKEN (a protocol for phone companies to digitally sign caller-id data) these operations could just grease the palms of a Caribbean telecomm POP to spoof any number in the North American Numbering Plan. Without a Chinese Communist style ID requirement for a mobile SIM (and probably not even then–the attack surface is huge), there will always be caller ID spoofing.
Funny thing. I have been getting a lot of spam calls recently, Friday alone I got 12 such calls from 8 am to about 6 pm. It has been incessant.
Today 3. So thank you ICE. Thank you very much for your efforts.
[…] GOOD: ICE Dismantles Criminal SIM Farms. […]
I have an iPhone that I am able to set so that no calls ring unless they are in my contacts (recent updates have made this more granular and [in my opinion] more difficult to use) so I have not answered a spam call in years. Version also has an integrated “service” to allow you to report spam calls/text so they are auto-blocked and never make it to your phone.
What ever happened to that national do not call list?
I am receiving 10-20 calls per day from 512-608 exchanges. ]I block them all but with that many numbers available this will probably keep happening for months.
Based on my unscientific and unsupported by evidence gut feeling of the typical rates of crime detection and prosecution, if they found and shut down 68, there are at least ten times that number still operating.
And I’d bet replacements for the ones they shut down are already up and running.
Will shutting down these farms alleviate my phone from the 15 on average spam calls per day for money lending or tax help?