Seven more SIM boxes recovered by police

Mumbai: The Mumbai crime branch has found at least seven more SIM boxes that were placed inside the residences of slum dwellers in the Trombay-Govandi belt as part of an illegal telephone exchange racket.

The police has learnt of a Dubai-based person who is the overseas point of contact of the accused and who also gave training to one of the accused in China. His antecedents are now being gathered.

The officials have analysed the calls that were made from three of the SIM boxes seized in all and have unearthed losses to the tune of Rs 49 crore. The scam is suspected to be worth several crores and analysis of calls on remaining the SIM boxes is underway.

“We are also communicating with the customs officials as the SIM boxes were imported by affixing panels on them to make them look like amplifiers. Identity of the importer and details on the frequency of these imports have been sought from them,” said a crime branch officer.

The investigators were stunned after the seizures of these SIM boxes were made from slum pockets. The slum dwellers were bluffed by being told that the boxes were Internet machines and they were paid money for electricity and rent for the spaces occupied by boxes.

After the modus operandi came to light, the police began a combing operation to weed out more such boxes and have recovered several SIM cards from slums.

The arrested accused were identified as Shams Shaikh (34), a Mankhurd resident; Shahid Jamal (36), a resident of Cheetah Camp area of Trombay; and Noor Mohammad Shaikh (35) and Nassir Hussain (30).

The accused were operating illegal telephone exchange in the Trombay-Govandi area and used latest SIM pooler technology. Their operations came on the radar of the department of telecommunications (DoT) after the authorities got suspicious on noticing massive and sustained incoming online traffic and zero outgoing traffic.

These China-made SIM boxes were used to place voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls from overseas. Calls were received from Gulf countries, United States and many other countries, officials said. Servers to push these calls were based in the United Kingdom and in residences of some slum dwellers in Trombay-Govandi and these VoIP calls were converted to normal calls masked with local numbers for the receivers.