Europol: 7 arrested in Cybercrime-as-a-Service takedown


An action day performed in Latvia on 10 October 2025 led to the arrest of five cybercriminals of Latvian nationality and the seizure of infrastructure used to enable crimes against thousands of victims across Europe.

During the operation codenamed ‘SIMCARTEL’, law enforcement arrested two further suspects, took down five servers and seized 1 200 SIM box devices alongside 40 000 active SIM cards. Investigators from Austria, Estonia and Latvia, together with their colleagues at 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.

Read more…
Source: Europol


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Russian cyber attack on Lithuania unlikely to provoke military response

    June 28, 2022

    A NATO member is under attack. Normally the meaning of this would be frighteningly clear, but this is an attack with a difference: not a physical attack, but a cyber attack; and working out what a cyber attack means is never simple. The NATO member in question is the Baltic state of Lithuania, which was targeted on ...

  • An unknown APT actor attacking high-profile entities in Europe and Asia

    June 21, 2022

    ToddyCat is a relatively new APT actor that we have not been able to relate to other known actors, responsible for multiple sets of attacks detected since December 2020 against high-profile entities in Europe and Asia. We still have little information about this actor, but we know that its main distinctive signs are two formerly ...

  • Cyber Europe 2022: Testing the Resilience of the European Healthcare Sector

    June 9, 2022

    To ensure citizens’ trust in the medical services and infrastructure available to them, health services should function at all times. If health services and infrastructures in Europe were the object of a major cyber attack, how would we respond and coordinate at both national and EU level to mitigate the incidents and prevent an escalation? This ...

  • Ukraine’s secret cyber-defense that blunts Russian attacks: excellent backups

    June 8, 2022

    The Kremlin-backed cyberattack against satellite communications provider Viasat, which happened an hour before Russia invaded Ukraine, was “one of the biggest cyber events that we have seen, perhaps ever, and certainly in warfare,” according to Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of CrowdStrike and chair of security-centric think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator. Alperovitch shared that opinion during a ...

  • Takedown of SMS-based FluBot spyware infecting Android phones

    June 1, 2022

    An international law enforcement operation involving 11 countries has resulted in the takedown of one of the fastest-spreading mobile malware to date. Known as FluBot, this Android malware has been spreading aggressively through SMS, stealing passwords, online banking details and other sensitive information from infected smartphones across the world. Its infrastructure was successfully disrupted earlier ...

  • Europe moves closer to stricter cybersecurity standards, reporting regs

    May 17, 2022

    Europe has moved closer toward new cybersecurity standards and reporting rules following a provisional network and information systems agreement dubbed NIS2 by the European Council and Parliament. Once approved, NIS2 will replace the current Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems, aka NIS, which was adopted in 2016. The new directive sets more stringent requirements ...