The latest digital scam method, among the more “hi-tech” to see the light of day, has Greek Police (Greek Police) arresting two Chinese nationals outside an outdoor shopping mall and confiscating electronic equipment used to steal data from unsuspecting people’s mobile phones.

In announcing the arrests and confiscation of the equipment, authorities referred to a method known as “SMS Blaster”.

The two suspects, 29 and 31, were first detected on Jan. 9 outside the specific mall, northeast of Athens proper and in the vicinity of the Athens International Airport. Upon an ID check the two suspects allegedly presented fraudulent documents.

A further investigation uncovered the hi-tech surveillance and data seizure equipment in their vehicle’s trunk and camouflaged as luggage, with a receiver was hidden in a fin atop the car’s rooftop.

Authorities said the specially equipped vehicle essentially acted as a movable cell phone tower that attempted to fool users’ mobile phones into interacting with it. If successful, the suspects’ equipment would downgrade a phone connection from 4G to 2G in order to exploit security gaps in the latter in order to retrieve information, such as a mobile subscriber’s number.

“Phishing” via SMS would follow, with the senders appearing as banks or parcel delivery services requiring personal banking information, especially web-banking codes.