Almaty police have uncovered an apartment housing equipment for GSM termination used by scammers. The "office" was located in a multi-story building on the outskirts of the city. Inside the apartment, authorities found a 64-slot SIM-box - a piece of equipment crucial for GSM termination, primarily used to store a large number of SIM cards.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), operators located outside Kazakhstan required a local operator for making calls, purchasing a number connected to a special database for a fee. Kuatbek Nauatov, acting deputy chief of the Almaty Police Department, provided these details.
The financial damage is estimated to be over 10 million tenge. During the operation, the police arrested a 31-year-old local resident, the organizer of the mini-ATS, who engaged in fraudulent activities using numbers via SMS hijacking services. A significant number of SIM cards from various mobile operators, phone number databases, and other related devices were seized by the police.
A pre-trial investigation has been initiated in connection with the case, with the suspect placed in pre-trial detention. On March 28, Zhandos Suynbay, the head of the Cybercrime Combat Center of the Criminal Police Department of the MVD of Kazakhstan, stated that scammers defrauded Kazakhstani citizens of 4 billion tenge in the first two months of 2024.
