Federal agents have discovered an additional 200,000 SIM cards connected to a communication network in the New York Tri-State area. The network is so powerful that officials said it could have knocked out cell towers and jammed emergency services.
CBS News reported that Homeland Security agents made the latest discovery at a site in New Jersey. It comes just days after the Secret Service exposed a large SIM farm connected to Chinese actors and organized crime.
Law enforcement briefed on the probe said agents were first tipped off last spring.
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The initial discovery
Investigators said the initial SIM farm could have caused a serious disruption to New York’s telecom systems and threatened the United Nations General Assembly meetings.
The initial bust recovered over 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers. The farm was capable of sending 30 million messages per minute. That would be enough to text every phone in the U.S. within 12 minutes.
It could also have blocked emergency communications, such as EMS and police dispatch, according to CBS.
Ongoing investigation
Officials told CBS that they have made no arrests. However, they said the encrypted network was used by foreign governments, drug cartels and human trafficking organizations.
“It would be unwise to think that there are no other networks out there being made in other cities in the United States, and that’s gonna be part of our investigation. We’re gonna run down every single lead,” Matt McCool, U.S. Secret Service special agent in charge of the New York field office, said.
Officials are now searching through every SIM card for calls, texts and search history. Each one contains the data footprint of a complete cellphone.
In a statement to CBS, a Homeland Security Investigations spokesperson said, “These enforcement actions are part of an ongoing and active nationwide HSI-led criminal investigation.”
