From Cambodia to Delhi: How a SIM box network defrauded India of Rs 100 crore; 7 arrested

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has arrested seven people linked to a transnational cybercrime syndicate that used illegal SIM box technology to defraud citizens across India. Investigators said the accused, including a Taiwanese national and a woman, had links to Chinese, Cambodian and Pakistani scam networks.

A SIM box is a device that holds multiple SIM cards and enables fraudsters to bypass legitimate telecom networks by rerouting international calls through local numbers. Police said the accused exploited this technology to carry out a large-scale "digital arrest" scam.

The accused have been identified as Parvinder Singh (38), Shashi Prasad (53), I-Tsung Chen (30), Sarbdeep Singh (33), Jaspreet Kaur (28), Abdus Salam (33) and Dinesh K (30), residents of Delhi, Mumbai, Punjab and Taiwan.

According to police, the racket, operational since Sept last year, is estimated to have cheated thousands of victims of around Rs 100 crore. Victims received calls from fraudsters impersonating Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) officials. The callers falsely accused them of links to terror incidents such as the Pahalgam attack and the Delhi blasts, threatened immediate arrest and coerced them into transferring money under intense psychological pressure.

Investigators found that the fraud calls were deliberately routed through low-frequency 2G networks to evade real-time location tracking. Though the calls appeared to originate from Indian numbers, they were actually placed from abroad—primarily Cambodia—and routed into India via SIM box installations.

Police said the syndicate used sophisticated techniques to evade detection, including overwriting and rotating IMEI numbers and merging multiple SIM box units into a single virtual system. This resulted in call records showing the same number originating from multiple cities on the same day, misleading law enforcement agencies.

DCP (IFSO) Vinit Kumar constituted a team that first arrested Shashi Prasad, custodian of a SIM box setup in Delhi, and Parvinder Singh, an active facilitator. The duo allegedly operated from five locations in the capital, knowingly enabling international cyber fraud.

Further investigation led to the arrest of I-Tsung Chen at Delhi's international airport. Police described him as the operational backbone of the syndicate, responsible for smuggling and configuring SIM box devices in India. Interrogation revealed his alleged links to a Taiwan-based organised crime network led by gangster Shang Min Wu, known for kidnapping, financial fraud and money laundering.

Analysis of the Delhi setup pointed to additional SIM box hubs in Mohali, Punjab, resulting in the arrest of Sarbdeep Singh and Jaspreet Kaur. Both had previously worked in Cambodia-based scam centres and were allegedly recruited by a Pakistani handler who funded and controlled SIM box installations in India.

The probe later uncovered attempts to install SIM box systems in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, and Malad, Mumbai, leading to the arrests of Dinesh K and Abdus Salam. Police said Dinesh had undertaken multiple foreign trips to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia, suspected to coordinate with cryptocurrency facilitators and financial handlers to launder extorted funds.

Investigators said the scam operated through an international command-and-control structure, with Indian operations forming only the last link. Cambodia allegedly served as the recruitment and training base, Chinese nationals supplied and configured SIM box hardware, a Pakistani handler facilitated funding and IMEI manipulation, while Nepal functioned as a remote control centre directing operations in India.

Police have seized 22 SIM box devices and 120 foreign SIM cards of China Mobile. Technical analysis revealed more than 5,000 compromised IMEI numbers and nearly 20,000 SIM cards embedded in the network. Further investigation is underway.