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!

▲

panarky 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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.

▲

delfinom an hour ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.