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SMS Pools and what the US Secret Service Really Found Around New York

Last week the United Nations General Assembly kicked off in New York City. On the first day, a strange US Secret Service press conference revealed that they had seized 300 SIM Servers with 100,000 SIM cards. Various media outlets jumped on the idea that this was some state-sponsored sleeper cell waiting to destroy telecommunication services around New York. Like me, you may have immediately wondered why some of the photos showed sophisticated racks of servers on shelves while others showed a hodge podge of devices strewn about the bare floor of an otherwise empty apartment.

photos extracted from USSS reporting

SIM Pools on Telegram

Beginning in late 2024, every cell phone in the USA started getting hit hard with annoying messages claiming to be informing us of undelivered packages. In early 2025, this morphed into the famous "Toll Road" phishing messages which started off with messages supposedly about unpaid tolls in Massachusetts Easy Pass and now imitate every toll road system in America. Because the goals of these SMishing messages were to load credit cards onto phones and use them to steal money, DarkTower spent quite a bit of time studying the infrastructure, which is primarily advertised and sold in Telegram channels that we call "Chinese Guarantee Syndicates." I've conducted several briefings about these systems, and have mentioned previously in this blog how they sell SMS-blasting telecom equipment (See: Chinese SMS Spammers Go Mobile ).

The devices found around the NYC tri-state area are a slightly different application of SMS-blasting.

The most famous of the Chinese Guarantee Syndicates, Haowang Guarantee, is part of the US-sanctioned Huione Pay, "The Largest Illicit Online Marketplace" according to Elliptic and WIRED. Haowang has shifted their business to Tudou Danbao, but their vendors continue to offer SMS Modem Pools and associated hardware and software as part of their Crime-as-a-Service empire. Here's an ad for one such vendor (with its translation):

Let's look at the Telegram channel of Annie, a China-based seller of SMS equipment. (In Chinese, these are called "Cat Pools" -- I'll explain why at the bottom of this article.) Most of the posts I'll show are from Chinese-language Telegram channels, so I'll include an English translation.

@Annie068a operates a channel dedicated to selling SMS Gateway equipment

Annie offers SMS Modem Pools in a variety of sizes

SMS Modem Pools have a variety of configurations. The most basic has 8 modem ports with slots for one SIM card each. On the opposite end of the scale, is a 64 port modem with capacity for 512 SIM cards. (Many of those found by the USSS seem to be 32-port modems with 256 SIM cards.) When there are more SIM cards than modem ports message sending rotates between SIM cards.

What does Annie suggest you might use your SMS Pool for? Mostly "Marketing."

The concept, as Annie explains, is that you can route messages from anywhere in the world and have them sent from an SMS pool sitting in the United States and being sent from a US-based SIM, thus having a US telephone number displayed in the caller id.

SMS Pools for Fraud and Phishing

Other Telegram channels are more blatant with suggesting the type of "Marketing" that one might do with the ability to send Bulk SMS messages to other countries. The Telegram channel "Mini Bulk SMS" provides examples, such as imitating the Irish bank AIB to send phishing emails, or imitating BMF in Austria, Binance in Italy, or doing an Apple refund scam in the US. In SouthEast Asia a major use of Bulk SMS is advertising to gamblers.

An English-speaking Bulk SMS provider, KathyBulkSMS, also is quite blatant about the criminal nature of the messages she suggests. Her service also has the ability to send using "Short Message Code" caller IDs. She particularly recommends imitating Coinbase if spamming in the US and says that her recent campaign, sending 170,000 such messages via Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, was "very effective."

Kathy gives other examples, such as imitating Binance and National Australia Bank for the Australian market, but her channel has suggestions for many countries, including Netflix and Crypto campaigns for: <div class= 29 September 2025

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