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:

  • Hospitals in London declared critical incident after cyber-attack

    June 4, 2024

    Major hospitals in London have declared a critical incident after a cyber-attack led to operations being cancelled and emergency patients being diverted elsewhere. It applies to hospitals partnered with Synnovis – a provider of pathology services. King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ – including the Royal Brompton and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital – and ...

  • Excel File Deploys Cobalt Strike at Ukraine

    June 3, 2024

    FortiGuard Labs has recently identified a sophisticated cyberattack involving an Excel file embedded with a VBA macro designed to deploy a DLL file. The attacker uses a multi-stage malware strategy to deliver the notorious “Cobalt Strike” payload and establish communication with a command and control (C2) server. This attack employs various evasion techniques to ensure successful ...

  • BBC cyber attack exposes details of 25,000 current and former staff

    May 30, 2024

    The personal data of more than 25,000 former and current BBC employees has been exposed in a major cyber attack targeting the broadcaster’s pension scheme. Information including names, addresses and National Insurance numbers was compromised after files containing personal details were stolen from a cloud data storage service earlier this month. It is not yet known who ...

  • Northern Ireland: Disabled former police officers to receive damages for alleged data breach

    May 30, 2024

    Disabled former policemen and women in Northern Ireland are to receive undisclosed damages for an alleged data breach, their lawyer revealed today. Financial settlements were reached in legal action against the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. Proceedings related to an investigation by the Commission into the workings of the Disabled Police Officers’ Association back in 2014. ...

  • India-Estonia Cyber Security Pact to Combat Growing Threat from Chinese Hackers

    May 25, 2024

    An Indian contingent was, for the first time, observers in an NATO-run cyber security exercise in Estonia this month. The exercise, the equivalent of an cyber Olympiad, was the largest exercise of its kind in Europe, Tiit Riisalo, Estonian economic affairs and information technology minister, said. Exercise Locked Shields involved 32 NATO countries and a handful ...

  • Bank of Russia reports rising number of cyber attacks on financial infrastructure

    May 23, 2024

    The Bank of Russia reported an increase in the number of attacks on suppliers of various IT solutions used in the financial market, the regulator said in its report. “It is particularly noteworthy that attacks on third parties – suppliers of various IT solutions utilized in the financial market – have increased in frequency in 2023. ...