Complaints from several citizens of Aspe (Alicante) led to the intervention of one of the first phone card mining farms discovered in Spain, run by one individual, a Ukrainian, from Barcelona. The infrastructure, capable of sending 2.5 million fraudulent messages and voice calls per day, is worth about 400,000 euros, and is rented to criminal networks specialized in technological fraud that want to operate in Spain from anywhere in the world. The person in charge of this operational center, 41 years old, was arrested and charged with crimes of fraud, usurpation of civil status, forgery of documents, computer destruction, capital laundering and belonging to a criminal group.
He carried out the operation, which was called Mosnik. a team @ From the Civil Guard of Alicante, specialized in computer crimes. Several victims carrying Russian and Ukrainian passports were reported, mainly, to the Civil Guard of the municipality of Aspe, inside Alicante, who received calls from people who passed by the National Police or employees of the Bank of Spain, some in their native languages. According to the report, the criminals claimed that they were investigating employees of their banking entities who might be committing fraud in their current accounts. To prevent their money from being stolen, they were arrested for obtaining their passwords and bank details or requesting high value transfers. Their anointing has left them spending €170,000.
The complaints reached the Computer Crimes Unit in Alicante, as the head of the Patrimonio de la Comandancia team, José Carlos Vega, and the head of the team, Francisco Javier Herrero, indicated in the press room. The conspiracy that led to the investigation “required photographs of police or bank business cards to convey peace of mind to the victims,” Vega says. Then, thanks to their personal data, they began making “unapproved” transfers, and the money “moved and disappeared into international accounts,” making it difficult to locate. Agents removed the phone lines that were using Altimador. The trail led to a cafe in Barcelona that was kept under surveillance.
From the Barcelona Foundation, an individual would often come out, laden with large boxes, take them home and become the main supporter. He turned out to be a 41-year-old Ukrainian citizen with computer skills, who had hidden an entire infrastructure in his home that allowed him to launch millions of text messages and voice calls daily. The individual provided this service to criminal networks who requested payment in advance in cryptocurrencies. Once the Court of Novelda (Alicante) allowed the case to be heard, investigators recorded the café, the arrested person’s residence and the remains of his property.
Herrero says the prisoner hid his real work in these three buildings. 35 available com. simboxThe boxes can hold up to 100 SIM cards, and are equipped with 865 modems, each capable of sending between 12 and 18 messages per minute, or about 2.5 million messages per day. At the time of registration, there were 852 active cards, but it also stored more than 60,000 national SIM cards and another 10,000 cards that had not yet been released. Combined with a large number of computers, this was all the perverted ham needed to present his mining farm to the top bidder. “How did the phone companies detect massive message transmissions? The transmission numbers changed frequently,” says the researcher, which is why the detainee “purchased SIM boxes from different providers and activated them with fake identities.” All of them, the name of the supposed speaker, the activity that hid the Barcelona café, which was a tapadera. In certain cases, Herrero continues, “the detainee had a bag with a bag in it com. simbox Portable it operates from any point in Spain, even from a running car, through an Internet connection via Wi-Fi or a mobile phone, making it difficult to locate. It can send up to 30,000 messages per day.
“All these devices were not identified until recently, because they were not necessary,” says Antonio Darder, head of the Judicial Police of the Alicante Command. Order TDF/149/2025, which the government entered into force last June to prevent the sending of large numbers of spam and fraudulent calls, “prohibits any calls to Spanish numbers made from computers with an IP located abroad.” International criminals began to spend time every day and took refuge in these farms with unlocking systems. If you want to work in Spain, you need someone with knowledge of computers and the country’s social structures. The detainee discovered his business standing and offered his services on the dark web until his arrest. After my formal release from prison, I was detained again after failing to appear in court.
The head of the Cantina leadership, Francisco Boyato, wanted to warn against this type of fraud “in the current context, where campaigns such as Black Friday or Christmas drive online purchases.” This circumstance “also increases tension”, which is why she asked citizens to raise their concerns in the face of “very useful offers, links sent by strangers or requests for personal and banking details that you would never ask for by phone in an official way.” It also announces that the investigation remains open to try to identify the largest number of victims and determine the total amount of money lost, “which, according to the operational capacity of the non-allergenic substance, could amount to several million euros.” Likewise, it states that “extensive lines of investigation have been opened to uncover other groups that benefit from this type of infrastructure.”