18 February 2020

Ugandan police arrested eight people in connection with telecom fraud in the capital Kampala, late January.

The raid, in collaboration with the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), also saw the police confiscate 1,500 SIM cards and four SIM boxes. 

Furthermore, the regulator reported that a SIM box 545 SIM cards were retrieved from Masanafu, in the Rubaga division, while three people were arrested.  

At Clement Hill Road, two people were arrested and a SIM box was seized. Meanwhile, at Nakawa market, two additional SIM boxes were taken with over 1,000 and one person was arrested. Two other people suspected of illegally providing SIM cards were also taken to custody. 

According to Ibrahim Bbossa, the head of public and international relations within the national telecom regulatory body, due to the strengthening of security measures for the purchase of a SIM card, telecom fraudsters have started to source them from phone thieves. 

Bbossa said criminals sell SIM cards to telecom fraud networks at the price of USh 100,000 per card.  

SIM boxing is the illegal electronic process of setting a device that can utilise several SIMs and use them same to complete international calls received from the internet as voice over IP (VoIP). The calls are then served to the in-country mobile network subscribers as “local traffic”.

During that process, the SIM boxer or criminal bypasses international call rates and undercuts the tariffs charged by local mobile operators.