5 March 2025
– There is money to be made by everyone.
During the past four years, scam call centers operating from Tel Aviv (Israel), Sofia (Bulgaria), Limassol (Cyprus), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Barcelona (Spain) have stolen no less than $275 million dollars from 33,000 individuals in 33 countries.
This type of organized crime would not be possible without a profit driven ecosystem of service providers enabling their operations, some of them knowingly supporting a criminal network, while others facilitating their operations as a result of broken KYC (know-your-customer) and AML (anti-money-laundry) procedures in place.
The scam empire ecosystem includes marketing run by affiliates that lure the victims to the scammers, social media platforms that disseminate the fraudulent campaigns, hosting providers that host the scams and their landing pages, voice over IP providers that route millions of phone calls between victims and call centers. The scams are also possible thanks to payment service providers (PSP) and large international banks that allow the transfer of funds.
During the past six months, 90 investigative journalists from 32 media organizations have untangled 1.9 TB of documents including screen recording and over a million audio recordings. The documents are part of an anonymous leak provided to SVT (Swedish Television). Today, the media consortium coordinated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) starts to publish their findings to put the spotlight on the scammers, reveal their modus operandi, their real identities and their accomplices.
The investigation confirms Qurium’s previous research on affiliate marketing networks as fraudulent companies that disseminates disinformation and lure common people into investment scams, dating scams and other ways to be deceived.
The scam call centers are lucrative “businesses” where the owners and its staff are living a luxurious life style with costly vacations, glamorous parties, and expensive shopping habits. All staff in the call centers are operating under fake names with fake passports while their social media accounts show their real identity and social habits. After years of exploiting unwary people, often ridiculing them and taking advantage of their weaknesses, it is now finally time to show how all this is possible.
Today, Qurium starts to release a series of articles around the “Scam Empire” with focus on the Hunt for Victims, the Milking of the victims by the Call center, the Washing of the money, and finally the Service providers that silently support the scammers and make their cut of the cake.
Today we introduce you to the “Scam Empire” collaborative project and release the article “The Hunt” that reveals how call centers manage to get in contact with their victims and which actors are there to lay the way.
The Scam Empire – Introduction to the investigation and Qurium’s findings (project page)
Explainer: Frequently asked questions about the Scam Empire
Report 1: The Hunt – From potential victim to “depositor” in 20 min
Report 2: The Milking
Report 3: The Washing (coming soon)
Report 4: The Affiliates
All reports from Qurium and the consortium will be available from the project page.
Contacts
Digital forensic: Tord Lundström <t at virtualroad.org> Technical Director
Media: Clara Zid <info at virtualroad.org> Media and Outreach Manager