Inside a studio apartment in Busan.
As detectives burst in and lift the bedding, a massive cache of routers and USIM cards is revealed.
These are signal converter repeaters that disguise internet calls originating from abroad to appear as domestic '010' numbers, along with burner USIM cards used in the crimes.
The repeaters were primarily used for voice phishing impersonating prosecutors, with 19 victims identified as having suffered losses totaling approximately 1.5 billion won.
Police arrested 17 members of the ring who smuggled, distributed, and operated the repeaters, as well as 84 USIM card providers, taking 16 of them into custody.
They are accused of bringing the repeaters into the country from November of last year until September of this year, installing them in studio apartments and elsewhere, and using them for phishing crimes.
Most of the ring members were foreign nationals from countries such as Russia and Belarus, and they were mostly recruited through Russian job-seeking and recruitment bulletin boards on Telegram.
Their immigration statuses varied widely, ranging from international students to foreigners staying illegally after entering on tourist visas, and those with a history of applying for refugee status.
They delivered equipment without meeting in person, using the so-called "drop" method, and exchanged instructions via Telegram.
Investigations showed that they operated repeater hubs in about 10 studio apartments nationwide, receiving compensation worth 700,000 won per week in virtual assets from a Chinese national ringleader.
The investigation began in February when a large quantity of broken USIM card pieces was discovered in the drainage of a studio apartment building in Busan.
[Kim Jae-han / Head of International Crime Investigation Division, Busan Metropolitan Police Agency: When a domestic mobile phone number is used in a phishing scam, the police immediately suspend that phone number. Consequently, those USIM cards no longer needed to be used, and it was confirmed that they cut up the USIM cards and threw them into the drainage.]
Police tracked surrounding CCTVs and USIM usage records to identify the repeater operators, and expanded the investigation to the entire ring, including distributors and recruiters, along the equipment delivery routes.
Subsequently, police conducted search and seizure operations at two warehouses managed by the ring and the suspects' residences, confiscating criminal equipment including 400 repeaters, 121 burner phones, and about 5,000 USIM chips.
Police plan to identify the overseas ringleaders and smugglers who distributed the repeaters and track their domestic smuggling and distribution routes.
(Reported by Kim su-yun | Video by Jung Kyung-moon | Video Editing by Kim Jong-tae | Produced by SBS Digital News)
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