“Card payment completed” spam text message: 2.8 billion, piled up among companies

◀ Anchor ▶

The police arrested a large number of international text message senders who sent spam text messages at the request of criminal organizations such as voice phishing.

Over the past 9 years, a whopping 2.8 billion texts have been sent.

This is reporter Jeong Han-sol.

◀ Report ▶

Police enter the office and arrest a man.

They also take out several envelopes containing bundles of money from the safe.

This is the company’s office that has been sending spam texts in large quantities.

The police arrested 20 people from 6 companies on charges of sending illegal international text messages in response to requests from criminal organizations such as voice phishing, and detained 3 people, including the company CEO.

They are suspected of sending bait texts, such as saying that a credit card has been issued or asking to confirm the delivery address.

The number of text messages sent by the six companies from 2015 to recently reached a whopping 2.8 billion.

This means that each mobile phone subscriber received about 50 texts.

[심무송/서울경찰청 형사기동대 피싱범죄수사계장]

“In fact, when I click on this text message and click on the URL here, an app I don’t want is installed or information stored on my phone is extracted and taken by them…”

The police began investigating in January of this year after recognizing that voice phishing crimes impersonating credit card companies and other organizations have increased since last year, and that the majority of these crimes began through international text messages.

In order to avoid regulations, companies have been operating servers overseas without registering with the Ministry of Science and ICT.

It was revealed that he lived a luxurious life, purchasing expensive apartments and cars with the money he earned.

The police have forwarded all members of the group to the prosecution and plan to confiscate approximately 5 billion won in crime proceeds.

This is Jeong Hansol from MBC News.

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