Swiss court sentences SMS fraudster, police repurpose blaster for training

SRF reports that the Basel-Landschaft criminal court has sentenced an SMS fraudster to a suspended 10-month prison term for sending fraudulent messages in three Swiss cantons in October 2025. The nearly 48-year-old Chinese man also received a five-year expulsion order and must pay more than 40,000 Swiss francs in legal costs.

The man did not appear in court on Thursday. He admitted the offences and has already left Switzerland. The case was handled under an abbreviated procedure, so there were no full closing arguments.

His defence lawyer described him as a minor operative and driver who had little influence over the organisation. The lawyer said the man accepted his guilt and regretted his actions, but viewed himself as a victim of a mafia-like organisation. The prosecutor rejected that characterisation, while acknowledging that the man had been paid for his work but had not received any of the money stolen from victims.

The arrest also gave Basel-Landschaft police a rare opportunity to seize and study an SMS blaster, a mobile device used to send large numbers of fake text messages. The police had previously had little knowledge of the technology and are now using the confiscated equipment for training. Investigators have also studied and reconstructed how the device works.

An SMS blaster can present itself as the strongest available mobile phone antenna. Smartphones within a radius of about 500 to 1,000 metres then connect to it. The device temporarily switches them to the outdated 2G network and exploits a weakness there to send SMS messages without checks. This allows operators to distribute phishing messages in large numbers without knowing the recipients’ phone numbers.

The mobile network operator Swisscom helped police locate the suspect. When an SMS blaster is active, many phones connect to it, creating a detectable pattern. Swisscom used these irregularities to estimate the device’s location and passed the information to police.

Investigators arrested the man in 2025 in the Basel region. He was travelling by car with the SMS blaster in the densely populated area between Muttenz and Basel. On one day, the device sent fraudulent messages to about 100,000 smartphones. Some messages were sent in the names of Migros and UBS, with links leading to fake websites designed to obtain credit card details.

Some recipients clicked on the links, but it remains unclear whether any money flowed from Switzerland. Police say the man did not act alone and are retaining other confiscated items in the hope of identifying two accomplices.