A team of officials/officers from Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Tamil Nadu LSA, Central Intelligence, Tamil Nadu Police and Airtel TN jointly raided the suspected location in Guindy, Chennai and busted an illegal telecom set up working in the locations based on the inputs provided by Central Intelligence.

It has been found that an illegal telecom set up consisting of Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) boxes 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, mobile and Landline phone service providers) and Government exchequer.

An illegal telephone setup at Guindy in Chennai was busted on 27.07.2023. The equipment and setup were seized by CCB Police officials Chennai. The setup consisted of the following:

• No of SIM Gateways (make-DINSTAR, capacity- 32/16 SIM ports): 4.
• No of Airtel SIMs used: 250 (Approximately)
• FTTH Router-1.
• Wi Fi SIM Router - 1
• Stray SIM cards, UPS, etc.  were also seized

Airtel TN has 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 CLI (Caller Line Identification) or no number displayed on their phone.

   

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(Release ID: 1943701)