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:

  • Russia says ‘unprecedented’ cyber attack hits foreign ministry amid BRICS summit

    October 23, 2024

    The Russian Foreign Ministry was targeted by a severe cyber attack on Wednesday, coinciding with the major BRICS summit taking place in the country, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Earlier Zakharova said that the ministry had been targeted by a large-scale distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). “A massive cyberattack from abroad began this morning on the infrastructure of ...

  • Data storage in spotlight of Italian security committee after Intesa breach

    October 22, 2024

    Italy’s influential parliamentary committee on security will hold a round of hearings on data storage following a major breach at the country’s biggest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. Intesa Sanpaolo is under investigation by prosecutors in the southern Italian city of Bari after it emerged that the accounts of ...

  • Finland’s NBI probes wave of bank cyber attacks

    October 18, 2024

    Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation has opened a preliminary probe on a series of cyber attacks on the country’s financial sector. Finnish banks have been targeted in cyber attacks in recent months. In particular, Nordea Bank has been hit by several distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks throughout the autumn. The bank has faced recurring problems ...

  • Analysis of the Crypt Ghouls group: continuing the investigation into a series of attacks on Russia

    October 18, 2024

    Last December, Kaspersky researchers discovered a new group targeting Russian businesses and government agencies with ransomware. Further investigation into this group’s activity suggests a connection to other groups currently targeting Russia. Kaspersky researchers have seen overlaps not only in indicators of compromise and tools, but also tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Moreover, the infrastructure partially overlaps ...

  • Greek police data leak exposes details of elite crime-fighting unit members

    October 18, 2024

    A Greek police officers association says it is planning legal action after names and details of hundreds of officers from a new elite crime-fighting agency were published on the internet. The Directorate for Combating Organised Crime, DAOE, was launched Thursday to tackle organized crime activities including contract killings, fuel smuggling and money laundering. Police officials confirmed ...

  • European companies anxious over non-implementation of EU cyber rules

    October 17, 2024

    Most EU member states are set to miss an implementation deadline falling today (17 October) to implement rules to protect critical entities against cyber-attacks and organisations are also concerned about fragmentation of such rules. Euronews reported last week that the European Commission had so far only received confirmations from Belgium and Croatia on transposition of the ...