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Comment by wildzzz | Hacker News Reader

Oh lol, this is a scam site. Yes, there are potential other uses for a sim box but mostly they are used for VoIP purposes. It's honestly so hard reading quotes from the US government these days. Cartels, drugs, guns. They make it sound like they interrupted the staging of an assault on the UN when the article actually says that the locations were within 35 miles of the UN headquarters in NYC. This is a significant distance as it covers beyond the 5 boroughs, it's the "tri state area". Like 20M people live in that circle. I highly doubt this is for anything other than VoIP scams.

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Yup. This is literally just a cellular grey route site for some shitty VoIP provider, just like the SIM box SMS scams go marching on in other countries. Some operator is shitting their pants right now, probably.

The SIM cards come from cheap MVNOs that have dealer arrangements for cheap or free first month activations, then they just set up a handful of SIM boxes and a residential Internet connection back to the mothership (like they did at the captured house with the white Verizon 5G Home router just casually sitting on the floor next to the units).

Similarly, I’ve had some friends on US MVNOs themselves that have access to “free” international calling, yet every time they call (the same) international number the receiving party gets a wildly different caller ID from a wildly different country each time (Poland, Moldova, etc). Also dodgy SIM boxes!

> shitty VoIP ...

Or grey-route bulk messaging and SMS OTP bypass so actors can register throwaway accounts on Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram, social platforms, fintech, crypto etc. then burn the numbers after use.

You need 100k SIMs to defeat per-SIM rate/behavior caps, receive OTPs for mass account creation and run thousands of campaigns/conversations in parallel while keeping each SIM's pattern below carrier detection thresholds.

It's not about the UN.

NYC is a prime market for "local presence" numbers (212/917/646 etc.), which boosts answer rates and trust for scams, impersonation, mass disinfo campaigns.

Those "local presence" numbers are highly depleted and highly unlikely to be available for MVNOs. Not to mention you don't need to be basically present in NYC to use those numbers.

The real reason this shit is in NYC is because the number of tower cells is huge due to population density. It makes having a few hundred to thousand devices in one office a bit more viable.

I live in the NY area (Long Island), and have a business line on my phone, so I get dozens of scam calls per day.

Most are spoofed. Many, from local Long Island exchanges.

All the spoofed calls just reuse existing numbers. When I first started getting them, I called a couple, until I figured it out. I usually got some poor, confused schlub.

I’ve gotten some calls, myself, and have been said poor, confused schlub.

Bonus points when they spoof your own number?

Hasn't happened to me, but a friend of mine, said it happened to him.

> Those "local presence" numbers are highly depleted

Yeah, the last time I asked for a 212 number from Verizon Wireless the guy literally laughed at me.

> yet every time they call (the same) international number the receiving party gets a wildly different caller ID from a wildly different country

Skype was like that for a long time

Agreed. These days setups imho aren't vanilla origination and termination VoIP scratch card traffic it's more likely a distributed bot farm obfuscation as a service provider. I have seen commercially available sim bank gateways that can separate the sim from the antenna in order to change towers and simulate movement. The use of eSim adapters make it superscaleable now in terms of abstracting the numbers from the sims. Whatever the application a press release tie in to UN is a little odd.

> Yes, there are potential other uses for a sim box but mostly they are used for VoIP purposes.

So you mean... like, these are the exit points into the "legitimate" telephone network for, say, those random MedAlert scam calls I keep getting from numbers scattered all over North America? Or if not, what does "VoIP" mean here exactly?

Somehow I've missed this entire phenomenon...

Bingo! And the call's been "verified by the carrier" because it came off the cell network from a purportedly valid SIM... but patched into a dodgy SIP connection back to the scammer.

> This is a significant distance as it covers beyond the 5 boroughs, it's the "tri state area"

Same year as the Phineas and Ferb reboot. Coincidence???

The "canonical" tri-state area is greater New York City, which stretches into Connecticut and New Jersey.

But the lyrics are still stuck in my mind, "The tri state area was the bi state area with an adjacent area, right over there".

Perhaps the Secret Service possesses additional information they're not disclosing that supports their narrative. It might come out at trial, if it gets to that stage. Or, it might not, because certain methods and sources of law enforcement operations might not be publicly disclosed if national security is involved.

But we can agree that we aren't obliged to believe them, right?

Of course. Trust in our Government is at a historic low these days, and reasonably so. However, that doesn't mean that everyone is inept or has ill intent. Most people I've met in government as well as the private sector want to do good (or at least not evil).

I agree with the idea that people want to do their best, and I think it's the machine itself that's really the problem day to day. That said, this is being filtered through a media mouthpiece, and that's where I raise an eyebrow.

The leaders of the US govt at high levels have specifically shown they aren't trustworthy which must impact the formerly trustworthy orgs, such as the FBI and the head of the FCC.

It does, and it's a shame for those careerists who are competent.

Don't you need to reveal the facts in criminal court? Right to see the evidence against you and all that.

Most facts, yes. Non-disclosure is the exception, not the rule, thanks to the Sixth Amendment's right to a fair trial. However, when national security is involved, the Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA) may apply, and some evidence may be reserved for in camera hearings.

Also, if the information would not exculpate the defendant, and the prosecution won't introduce it at trial as evidence of guilt, then the information can be withheld.

I'm on the verge of not trusting the US govt when they prosecute things. Epstein details being proclaimed and then hiding them is just the start. If the large and formerly mostly independent and trustworthy federal law enforcement groups can't disclose info there, what should make you feel like they are honest?

Are we talking about the criminal trial process here? Or the pre-trial investigation and prosecution process? They're not the same.

Good point, criminal trial process is not obviously corrupted like the pre-trial. Every day recently there's a story about trump trying to get his political enemies prosecuted, and then he fired people who investigated him from his last term.

But I should mention the bad guys are trying to get grand jury assembled that would prosecute James Comey. Does that count as 'criminal trial process'? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/us/politics/james-comey-i...

I'm not a lawyer, but this corruption will be getting worse. That distinct is relevant still but for how long?

An indictment is pre-trial. To get a criminal indictment, all you need to show to a grand jury is "probable cause," which is a very low standard--the same standard needed to justify an arrest. That's the reason for the old joke about being able to indict a ham sandwich.

Now that Comey's been indicted, the trial process will begin, assuming he doesn't plea out (and I don't think he will). The uphill battle for the prosecution now begins.

Generally, yes. You have a right to discovery of anything that they plan to introduce at trial against you, or anything that would cast doubt on your guilt (exculpatory evidence).

The article really should have put that map front and center, because that map alone is enough to show how ridiculously overhyped the government claims are.

I'm presuming this discovery was near the outer perimiter of that circle, because otherwise presumably they'd have quoted a smaller, scarier number.

Like XKCD said, every map is basically a population map: https://xkcd.com/1138/

The interesting part is in the delta between population and usage.

reminds me of when i see articles in the news in my country sometimes, with headlines like : "Man found with drugs within 500 meters of school"

There are schools everywhere, usually in places where there are lots of other amenities like shops, and doctors, and pubs.

Yes, when there are schools every few miles, it's very likely that any given thing will end up within range of a school.

why did the voip scammers need guns and cocaine?

Gun ownership is a protected constitutional right and cocaine is a popular drug. May but be connected.

There's probably a pretty significant overlap of scammer, gun owner and cocaine user Venn diagram. Is it that surprising?

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