Thousands of SIM Cards Seized in Nationwide Raid

Hands around a table holding smartphones — Photo: Akhenaton Images / Shutterstock

Federal agents quietly took aim at the invisible machinery behind scam calls and mass texts, and pulled the plug on some of the biggest “SIM farms” ever found on U.S. soil.

Story Snapshot

Homeland Security Investigations ran Operation Signal Break from June 22 to July 10, targeting illegal SIM farms across multiple states.
Agents say they dismantled “critical command-and-control infrastructure” used to blast out scam calls and phishing texts at huge scale.
Since 2024, Homeland Security Investigations reports seizing over 500,000 SIM cards and 1,900 SIM boxes, disrupting 68 SIM farms in 15 states.
Officials claim these criminal SIM farms help steal about $15 million from Americans every year, though the exact math stays under wraps.

How SIM Farms Turn Your Phone Into A Target

Homeland Security Investigations describes SIM farms as industrial scale texting and calling factories, built out of short message service gateways known as SIM boxes that hold hundreds or thousands of cell phone cards at once. These boxes route huge volumes of disguised calls and texts, allowing crooks to spray phishing links and fake bank alerts across the country with almost no cost. To the person who answers the phone, it looks like a normal local number. Behind the scenes, it is a machine built for fraud.

Bloomberg Law reports that in recent weeks agents seized more than 30,000 mobile phone cards from SIM farms across the country, in what Homeland Security Investigations says was an effort to dismantle the infrastructure criminals use for widespread telephone fraud. Media coverage from the United States and abroad echoes the same picture: rows of devices, stacks of cards, and gear tuned to send massive volumes of scam traffic designed to trick people into sharing personal information. Every call or text is cheap, but the damage to victims adds up fast.

Inside Operation Signal Break’s Nationwide Push

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement press release says Homeland Security Investigations ran Operation Signal Break between June 22 and July 10, targeting illegal SIM box operations run by transnational criminal organizations. The Department of Homeland Security Cyber Crimes Center led the mission, with Homeland Security Investigations teams from at least 11 field offices surging into high risk areas in California, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. These “SIM Box Surge Teams” mixed special agents, criminal analysts, and computer forensics experts to hit multiple sites in quick succession.

Homeland Security Investigations says this crackdown is part of a broader campaign dating back to 2024. Across that period, the agency reports executing more than 116 federal criminal search warrants tied to SIM farms. Those warrants, according to the press release, produced seizures of over 500,000 cards, more than 1,900 SIM boxes, and around $700,000 in alleged illicit proceeds. Officials also point to one criminal arrest, 11 administrative arrests, and disruption of 68 SIM farms in 15 states used to send fraudulent calls and texts. The disruption claim reflects a strategy that targets infrastructure even when only a few operators are charged at first.

The $15 Million Question And What We Still Do Not See

The agency’s social media statement goes further and says criminal SIM farms scam Americans out of about $15 million each year. That number fits a common law enforcement story line that highlights harm in dollars, but the public record here does not show how analysts reached that estimate. There is no shared model, case list, or data sample explaining which scams were counted and how they were tied back to specific SIM boxes. For readers who value hard evidence, that missing detail matters.

The same gap appears when you look for warrants, affidavits, or detailed site inventories. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement announcement and news coverage describe “illegal SIM farms” and “transnational criminal organizations,” but they do not name specific groups or release the underlying court documents that supposedly prove each site’s role. From a common sense conservative view, taking down large fraud infrastructure is good and needed. At the same time, proper due process means those claims should face testing in court, not live forever only in press releases.

Trust, Power, And The Pattern In Modern Cyber Crackdowns

This operation sits inside a bigger trend where agencies focus on infrastructure first and public messaging later. Homeland Security Investigations emphasizes “critical command-and-control infrastructure” language that mirrors how cyber units talk about botnets and spam networks. Counting cards, boxes, and farms disrupted makes quick sense to busy taxpayers who want action against scammers. It also gives agencies a way to show results fast, even while criminal cases and forensic analysis quietly move through the system.

A five-state ICE @HSI_HQ and @DHSgov Cyber Crimes Center operation June 22-July 10 continued to decimate criminal “SIM farms” used to scam Americans out of about $15 million each year.

These “farms” house short message service gateways called “SIM boxes” that contain… pic.twitter.com/34bUa6ItGB

— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) July 28, 2026

Past findings about surveillance tools used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Secret Service have made some Americans wary of official stories in this space. Reports from civil liberties groups describe illegal use of cell site simulators without proper court orders, which undercuts blind trust in whatever new technology story a federal office tells. That history does not prove Operation Signal Break is flawed. It does, however, justify asking for full documentation, from warrant packets to device logs, so the public can see where strong fraud fighting ends and unchecked power might begin.