The U.S. Secret Service dismantled a massive telecommunications network hidden throughout the New York City area, forcing investigators to confront a startling reality surrounding threats to national security. 

The bust marks one of the largest communications threats uncovered within the country, with over 300 SIM servers filled with more than 100,000 SIM cards discovered throughout various sites within the tri-state area. The devices possessed the capability to transmit up to 30 million text messages a minute, according to The Associated Press. 

“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement Sept. 23. “The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down and dismantled.”

I’ve never seen anything like this, certainly not at this scale,” Mauro told Fox News Digital. “There’s always phone fraud, cyber fraud, people scanning websites for credit card numbers and things like that, but I’ve never seen a server farm configured on American soil at this level.”