Overview
- Homeland Security officials say at least 200 SIM farms are active in the United States, with setups found in places like shared offices and auto shops but controlled from China.
- A single operator can match the output of 1,000 phone numbers, and researchers tracked roughly 330,000 toll-related scam texts in one recent day as volumes surged this year.
- Phishing links in texts posing as toll or USPS notices capture card details and one-time passcodes that criminals use to add victims' cards to Apple or Google Wallet.
- U.S.-based gig workers act as mules to spend the digital or cloned cards on iPhones, gift cards, and other goods that are resold or shipped to China for profit.
- Authorities highlight a growing black market for hardware kits sold on Telegram and urge recipients to ignore suspicious texts and report them to the FTC.