Toronto Police have charged three men in a cybercrime investigation involving SMS blasters, portable devices that mimic cellphone towers and send scam texts to phones that connect to them.
Police said it’s the first time that an SMS blaster has been detected in Canada, marking an evolution in the tactics employed by cybercriminals.
“What makes this particularly concerning is the scale and impact. This wasn’t targeting a single individual or a business – it had the ability to reach thousands of devices at once,” Deputy Chief Robert Johnson told reporters Thursday.
“This is a clear example of how cyber-enabled crime is becoming more advanced, more mobile and more difficult to detect, and why policing must continue to evolve alongside it,” he added.
The investigation, dubbed Project Lighthouse, began in November, 2025, when a cybersecurity partner alerted law enforcement that an SMS blaster was operating in downtown Toronto.
SMS blasters are one of the hottest new gadgets in the arsenals of cybercriminals, and have been detected in other countries such as Britain and New Zealand.
The device can be hidden in the trunk of a car and driven to different locations, where it tricks nearby phones into connecting with it instead of a cell tower. That allows the cybercriminal to send scam texts to those phones without having to obtain their phone numbers or getting blocked by wireless carriers.
Detective Sergeant Lindsay Riddell said the scam texts appear to come from trusted organizations. They direct the cellphone user to click a link, which takes them to a fake website designed to steal their personal information, banking credentials and passwords.
The investigation revealed that the blaster was being run out of a vehicle, which was driven to various locations throughout the Greater Toronto Area, Det. Sgt. Riddell said.
“We believe tens of thousands of devices connected to the blaster over several months,” she said.
“We also identified more than 13 million network disruptions where devices were unable to properly connect to legitimate cell towers. That’s significant because during those moments, access to services like 911 could be impacted,” she added.
Toronto Police arrested and charged three men – 27-year-old Hamilton resident Dafeng Lin; 25-year-old Markham, Ont., resident Junmin Shi; and 21-year-old Markham resident Weitong Hu – with a total of 44 offences, including fraud and mischief. They also seized several SMS blasters.
Det. Sgt. Riddell said police are still working to identify victims.
“We’re actively searching our reports to the Toronto Police Service for these types of cases to then see if it’s related to this investigation,” she said.