Three SIM boxing electronic fraudsters will serve four years in jail after they were found guilty of various crimes.

The three are; Ibrahim Kagulire, Denis Musazi and Maxie Bingi. Buganda Road Court Magistrate Stella Amabilis ruled that the fraudsters were operation telecommunication apparatus without a license which is contrary to section 22 of UCC Act 2013.

Court concurred with the prosecution led by UCC lawyer Kenneth Sseguya that there was need to send a strong signal to avoid future digital-related offences

What is SIM Boxing?

A SIM box also called a SIM bank is a device used as part of a VoIP gateway installation. It contains a number of SIM cards, which are linked to the gateway but housed and stored separately from it. A SIM box can have SIM cards of different mobile operators installed, permitting it to operate with several GSM gateways located in different places.

How it’s done

Calls made via the internet are sent to Sim boxes which redirect this illegal VoIP traffic onto mobile networks. Fraudsters effectively bypass the interconnect toll charging points to exploit the difference between the high interconnect rates and the low retail price for on-network calls, thus avoiding payment of the official call termination fee of an Operator.

Any international call goes through a certain way, before getting from subscriber A to subscriber B. In order to deliver the call quickly, efficiently and inexpensively, large mobile operators use the services of transit operators (intermediaries), whose task is to deliver the call to the operator of another country, which in turn will be sent to subscriber B.
Therefore transit operators buy the route from people or organizations that own SIM box fraud system. Thus, people who own such a system receive money for the route at international rates and only pay the local cost, which is actually within the network.
SIM box acts as a repository of SIM cards, which after converting calls from international cards, make local calls.

Additional information from Dignited