Philippines – GCash, the country’s leading mobile wallet, expressed its full support to the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG) and the National Telecommunications Security Council (NTSC) for the seizure of over 80,000 unregistered SIM cards used for various types of scams such as e-wallet accounts takeover, phishing, love scams, and illegal gambling operations.
During a recent press conference, the PNP-ACG explained that scammers used a pirated GSM modem, which is legally issued and should only be used by telecommunication companies in the country, in sending over 300 scam texts in a span of 1-2 minutes using up to 30 unregistered SIM cards. During the investigation, it was also revealed that at least 40,000 of the seized unregistered SIM cards are from local telco providers, while others are foreign mobile SIM cards.