Last week police in New South Wales, Australia, raided a modest home on the outskirts of Sydney and arrested a 39 year old man suspected of systematic smishing fraud. Large numbers of SIM cards were seized along with two simboxes, one of which is pictured. The man is alleged to have sent SMS messages demanding payment on behalf of well-known organizations he impersonated, including Australia Post and Linkt, a company which collects road tolls. It is believed he sent more than 17 million messages containing links to phishing websites in total. At least one of the URLs used by the suspect was recently listed as unsafe by Google.
The investigation was led by Strike Force Kanbi, a new team established by the New South Wales Cybercrime Squad whose goal is to investigate the abuse of simboxes. This is the first reported operation by Strike Force Kanbi. The suspect was given bail and his court hearing is scheduled for January 17.
Detective Acting Superintendent Jason Smith, Commander of the Cybercrime Squad, warned that:
SMS phishing is one of the most common tactics deployed by scammers to obtain banking and other personal information from a victim, and SIM boxes can hold over 250 active SIM cards and will typically send out up to 150,000 messages per day containing phishing lures to various scams.
The police press release is here whilst photographs of the arrest and seized equipment can be found here.
