Secret Service foils espionage plot to crash New York City cellphone network ahead of UN General Assembly

The U.S. Secret Service said it dismantled a sprawling hidden telecom network in the New York region that could have crippled the city’s cellphone service in the run-up to the United Nations General Assembly. Officials described the system as a mass, coordinated operation that might have jammed or overwhelmed networks, interfered with 911 calls and disrupted emergency communications in a city that relies on mobile connectivity for daily life and security operations.

The cache consisted of more than 300 SIM servers loaded with over 100,000 SIM cards, clustered within 35 miles of the United Nations, officials said. Investigators described the operation as functioning like banks of mock phones, capable of generating mass calls and texts, swamping local networks, and masking encrypted communications for those connected to the network. Authorities found rows of servers and shelves stacked with SIM cards, with more than 100,000 already active and large numbers waiting to be deployed, signaling that operators were prepared to scale up further. The operation spanned multiple sites across the metropolitan area.

Officials stressed there is no disclosed direct plot to disrupt the UNGA and no credible threat to New York City at this time. Forensic work is in early stages, but investigators suspect nation-state actors used the system to relay encrypted messages to organized crime groups, cartels, and terrorist organizations. No government or criminal groups have been identified publicly.

The operation was described as well-funded and highly organized, with costs running into millions of dollars for hardware and SIM cards. It was capable of sending up to 30 million text messages per minute, a scale that could have crippled cellular and emergency communications at a moment of heightened security around the UN gathering, officials said.

The incident comes as roughly 150 foreign leaders and senior officials converged on Manhattan for the UN General Assembly, a reminder of the vulnerability of critical infrastructure even amid high-level diplomacy. Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool said the effort underscored a new frontier of risk: threats to the invisible infrastructure that keeps a modern city connected. He drew a comparison to the cellular outages that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombing, noting that an attacker could have chosen the timing to cause maximum disruption.

Forensic work on the phones will require examining tens of thousands of communications to determine where numbers end up; McCool said the process will take time. Authorities have not disclosed the specific groups tied to the network, and investigators caution that the early stage of analysis limits the ability to attribute the operation to any single actor.

The Secret Service Director, Sean Curran, said prevention is central to the agency’s mission, and the takedown demonstrates that imminent threats to protectees will be investigated and dismantled. He and other law enforcement officials stressed that while the investigation continues, there is no known credible current threat to New York City.