Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations discovered an additional 200,000 SIM cards at a location in New Jersey, law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News.
This follows last week’s discovery by U.S. Secret Service of a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York Tri-State area that investigators said could potentially have caused a serious disruption to New York’s telecom systems and threatened the United Nations General Assembly meetings.
Agents were first tipped off last spring, and officials believe that among other foreign links, the telecommunications network was connected to Chinese actors, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the probe.
Authorities still have not made any arrests.
The seizure announced by the Secret Service last week of active SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings located at more than five sites was already the largest of its kind. Law enforcement had discovered 300 SIM servers — over 100,000 SIM cards — enabling encrypted, anonymous communication and capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute.
Officials said the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of services attacks with the ability to block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. An official briefed on the investigation told reporters that the sophisticated network “could text message the entire country within 12 minutes” and added that “this was well organized and well funded.”
Early analysis showed the network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals known to U.S. law enforcement, including members of known organized crime gangs, drug cartels and human trafficking rings, according to multiple officials briefed on the investigation. The Secret Service is combing through the SIM cards as part of a forensic analysis.
One official told CBS News that each SIM has the equivalent data of a cell phone, and law enforcement was going through every call, text and search made on the SIM cards.
ABC News first reported on the discovery of 200,000 additional SIM cards. CBS News has reached out to Homeland Security Investigations for comment.
