Overview
- Toronto police charged three men with 44 offenses tied to a mobile “SMS blaster” that sent fraudulent texts to nearby phones.
- The device mimicked a cell tower, pulled phones away from legitimate networks, and pushed messages posing as banks or service providers to steal logins.
- The setup operated from cars across the Greater Toronto Area and led to tens of thousands of connections and more than 13 million network disruptions that could block calls to 911.
- The investigation, launched in November 2025 as Project Lighthouse with support from the RCMP cybercrime center and regional forces, resulted in searches in Markham and Hamilton and the seizure of multiple devices.
- Police named the suspects as Dafeng Lin, 27, Junmin Shi, 25, and Weitong Hu, 21, and said the immediate threat in Toronto has been contained.