Police in Bozhou, China, have dismantled a massive illegal SIM card ring powering overseas phone scams, seizing over 400,000 SIM cards—a record-breaking haul so huge the confiscated cards weighed as much as a heavy bag of rice.
The investigation kicked off when officers noticed a cluster of scam calls originating from the border area between Qiaocheng District and Guoyang County. The callers were using a "dual-phone audio bridge" setup to route overseas scam calls through local lines. Following the digital trail, police identified a suspect named Ma, who was constantly buying up bulk SIM cards.
To avoid getting caught, the gang used dead drops. Suppliers would stuff the SIM cards inside empty cigarette packs, leave them at pre-arranged spots, and walk away. Ma would pick them up later, ensuring no one ever met face-to-face.
As police dug deeper, they uncovered a wider network involving suspects named Wang Mouyu and Zhang, eventually tracing the supply line back to Wang Mouyu’s father, Wang Mouhui.
Officers caught Ma red-handed while he was setting up the audio-bridging gear. Wang Mouhui and the rest of the ring were rounded up soon after. In their hideouts, police uncovered more than 400,000 SIM cards, setting a local law enforcement record for the largest SIM stash ever confiscated in Bozhou.
Where did nearly half a million SIM cards come from? Most were harvested from discarded or traded-in mobile phones. The senior Wang had run a second-hand phone business for over a decade and noticed that many people forgot to take out their SIM cards when handing over old devices. Realizing many of these cards were still active, he enlisted his family to collect and hoard them in bulk.
The scam technique itself—often referred to as a "phone port" setup—is surprisingly simple. Scam operators hiding overseas place a call to one phone, which is connected via an audio cable to a second phone carrying a local Chinese SIM card. The second phone then dials the victim. Because the call shows up as a local domestic number, victims are much more likely to pick up and trust the caller.
Police are warning the public to always remove SIM cards and completely wipe old devices before selling or throwing them away, so innocent users don't unknowingly supply toolkits for global fraud operations.
