If you were ever intrigued by how criminals unlocked your smartphone after its theft, the iServer network was the answer in nearly half a million cases—until Europol stepped in.

Ultimately, criminals received the stolen and validated credentials through the iServer web interface, enabling them to unlock a phone, turn off “Lost mode,” and untie it from the owner’s account. To better camouflage the ruse, iServer often disguised phishing pages as belonging to cloud-based services.

A joint law enforcement operation has dismantled an international criminal network that used the iServer automated phishing-as-a-service platform to unlock the stolen or lost mobile phones of 483,000 victims worldwide.

Criminals used the iServer platform to unlock and fully take over stolen smartphones. But last week, police in several countries helped shut it down.