A team of officials/officers from Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Tamil Nadu LSA, Central Intelligence and Tamil Nadu Police Salem, BSNL TN and Airtel TN jointly raided the suspected locations in Meyyanur & Kondalampatty areas in Salem and busted the illegal telecom set ups working in those locations based on the complaints received from DOT call centre and inputs provided by Central Intelligence.

It has been found that an illegal telecom set up consisting of Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) box and a SIM based wireless internet router/FTTH router were used to terminate international calls as local calls bypassing the licensed International long-distance operators (ILDO) Network.

The SIM box fraud is a setup, where fraudsters team up with partners abroad to route international calls through the internet using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). These international calls will appear as calls with local/national CLI. Such illegal telecom setups pose threat to national security in addition to causing revenue loss to the Telecom Service Providers (ILDO, NLDO, CMTS operators) & Government exchequer.

Illegal telephone setups in two locations at Salem were busted on 13.02 2023. The equipment and setups were seized by the Police officials of Salem Tamil Nadu. The setup consisted of the following:

• No of SIM Gateways (make-DINSTAR, capacity- 16/32/64/128 SIM ports) : 19.
• No of BSNL & Airtel SIMs used : 750 (approx)
• SIM based WIFI Hotspot (make: Tenda) : 11
• RJIO FTTH Router-1.
• Stray SIM cards, mobile and other similar equipment were also seized.

BSNL TN and Airtel TN have filed FIR against the accused for having performed such unlawful activities.

DoT has notified a toll free number “1800 110 420 / 1963” on which the public can inform DoT Call Center about receipt of an international call with local/national CLI(Caller Line Identification) or with no number displayed on their phone.

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