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In the age of smartphones, the pockets of Americans have become an easy target for Chinese criminal gangs exploiting text messages to steal billions of dollars, according to a shocking report published by the Wall Street Journal, which revealed that millions of Americans receive dozens of fraudulent messages daily. This has turned into an organized trade generating over a billion dollars in three years, managed by secret rooms in China using advanced "SIM farm" technology. The FBI revealed that last year alone, around 60,000 complaints were recorded, with cyber fraud leading to the theft of more than a billion dollars from Americans between 2022 and 2025, after customers receive messages like "Your toll fees are overdue now... Pay immediately to avoid a fine!" or "You need to pay the U.S. Postal Service fees before your shipment is closed," or even "You owe the New York City Financial Authority for unpaid traffic violations... Click here to settle," which are not official warnings but carefully designed electronic traps to drive victims to fake sites that steal credit card information and passwords.

The Beginning of the Story

The story began as a simple scam in the early part of the last decade, but it has evolved into a complete industry thanks to "SIM farms," which are rooms filled with thousands of SIM cards installed in cheap phones, allowing one person to send millions of messages daily, equivalent to the productivity of a thousand regular phones. Adam Parks, a special agent in the Department of Homeland Security's Investigations Division, said, "One person in a room can send the number of messages that a thousand phone numbers send," noting that these farms, estimated to number around 200 in the United States alone, are operated remotely from China, where organized criminals coordinate their operations online, taking advantage of loopholes in U.S. communications laws.

Many Victims

The report revealed that the victims include everyone: from truck drivers fearing road fines to urban residents receiving "postal fees" notifications. Once the victim clicks on the link, they are directed to a fake site that tracks every click, stealing credit card details, and then comes the second blow: another message requesting a "one-time password" to confirm the payment, which is actually a code from the bank used to add the card to an electronic wallet like Apple Pay or Google Wallet, allowing the scammers to make immediate purchases.

Increasing Losses

As losses increase, the Department of Homeland Security has launched a campaign to combat these networks, including seizing phones and devices in recent raids in Minnesota and Washington. However, U.S. authorities consider the challenge significant, especially given the difficulty in cooperating with Chinese authorities, making prosecution nearly impossible, prompting experts to call for enhanced artificial intelligence to detect suspicious messages. Text message fraud, known as "smishing," is one of the most common forms of cybercrime in the United States, targeting mobile text messages to trick victims into revealing personal or financial data. According to reports from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the United States recorded over 300,000 complaints about text message fraud in 2024 alone, with losses reaching billions of dollars annually.