Anonymous Journalist (00:28)
It depends on who you have worked for before. There are people who know about this area. There are people who can guess. There are people who have never heard of it at all. And when they understand, some of them just leave. It depends entirely on the person. But it's a good question, because, for example, the business coach who conducts training there, well, at least she did for us, she was very careful to say this in hints during training. It all depends on who is presenting the information and who is listening to it. And I'll give you an example to make it clearer. When I was studying there, there was a student, he was very young, green. So, on the third or fourth day, he asked her: "So how do these clients withdraw their money?" And the business trainer said, right in front of the whole audience, "They don't f*****g withdraw it"
Jack (01:26)
We’ve all had those numbers call us – the unknown ones, sometimes local, sometimes not. Whether its someone trying to make you poor money in a guaranteed investment scheme, donate to a charitable cause, or perhaps those helpful people who profess to be from a tech company, offering to fix your computer.
Jack (01:53)
Which isn’t broken of course. Personally, I don’t answer them, I’m not remotely interested in doing so. But I know people who have lost thousands through scams like this – and these are intelligent, well-educated, and professional people. But on the other end of that phone is a skilled manipulator with one goal in mind – to get your money. Behind these scam call centres stands the shadowy spectre of organised crime – forever looking for ways to squeeze money out of people. Now, in Ukraine, its estimated that there are hundreds, if not thousands of scam call centres – many of them targeting Russians.
Jack (02:46)
Welcome to Deep Dive from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Jack (02:46)
And this is “They don’t f*****g withdraw it”: Scam Call Centres in Ukraine.
Jack (02:51)
Ok, so last year state-owned media company Russia Today released this terrible advert… so let me set the scene – its apparently 2021 and Christmas in “Europe”, a lovely family scene, bright lights, a warm and cosy environment – the parents present a gift to their young daughter, a small hamster with a red bow on its head – all is well.Then we fast forward a year, it’s Christmas 2022, the light has changed, its dark and cold, with just candlelight – the dad, wrapped up in warm clothes takes the hamster cage and removes the hamster wheel – which he then wires up to the Christmas lights - the hamster is then returned to the wheel, and it starts running and the Christmas lights flicker on. The family sit down, they are cold, but it’s OK because they are wrapped up together under a blanket. Again, we fast forward a year, its Christmas 2023, and the scene resembles something more post-apocalyptic; you can hear the cold wind whipping around, the family sit around a table, wrapped up head to toe in warm jackets, hats, scarves etc. The mum comes in and dishes out the stew she’s made for the family – everyone is miserable. The dad proceeds to each some of the stew, when he realises that there was something in his mouth – the red bow from the hamster – the mum puts her hands to her lips, silently indicating to stay quiet, so the child doesn’t notice. The dad then runs to be sick before the message “Merry Anti-Russian Christmas – If your media doesn’t tell you where this is all going on, RT is available via VPN”.Now, apart from the absurdity of this video – it’s the messaging that I find most interesting, this idea of “freezing Europe”. This, of course, was a longing running threat from the Putin regime and a fear in Europe for much of 2022 - anyone following the news will have seen this. But people who definitely did see this, were scammers, they are always aware of what’s going on around the world – and they exploit it. For example, news outlet Ekonomichna Pravda in Ukraine wrote about a scam call centre, describing a story about a pensioner from Moscow that thought they were investing in Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany that was damaged in September 2022 – anyway, she saw an advert on social media which said that “the flow had been restored” and that “the European region is freezing”, there’s that propaganda line that has been pushed, and the “price of gas is also increasing” – so invest and “get billions” of Rubles. She did, investing a little, about 50 thousand Rubles, at the time about $650 dollars. This original investment skyrocketed – quickly rising from $650 to $4000 – so she invested more and more, taking out loans in the process. But that was fine because she was now worth millions…time to start spending and enjoying life…except, withdrawing it proved extremely difficult – before finally…Nothing. The contact number is disconnected. The money is long gone.
Jack (06:20)
I imagine there loads of you have seen the film Wolf of Wall Street – there’s this iconic scene where Leonardo di Caprio’s character is giving a motivational speech to his staff, encouraging them to make as much money as possible – but it’s just a film, albeit based on a real story…dramatic license.
Jack (07:11)
But actually, in Ukraine, in these scam call centres…well, there are similarities…someone we spoke to described how the boss would give these motivational speeches at the start of the working day, before saying “like Wolf of Wall Street”.So, who are those cheering to the ‘Ukrainian Jordan Belfort’ – well they are the sales managers – mainly students, graduates or young professionals who have applied for the job, been through the training, and secured an entry level position.
Anonymous Journalist (07:39)
The most common position is “sales manager”. His or her task is to get the client to make an initial deposit. It’s a job mostly done by young people, students, and recent graduates. They are under thirty years old, nearly all of them.
Jack (07:55)
These are the words of a journalist who worked in one of these call centres, for what reason – they called it a “journalistic experiment” – their words are spoken by an actor.
Anonymous Journalist (08:05)
There is also a position that's called a ‘Closer’. This is a person who helps to close the deal. There may have people who are hesitant to make the first deposit. Everything is arranged differently in different offices. For example, in some offices, the closer is always connected to the call and the sales manager says, "I'll connect you to our legal and economic specialist", and the victim gets the impression that this person is more experienced and more trustworthy.
Jack (08:35)
And there aren’t that many of these Closer’s – for example, if the office has like 50 staff members, there would only be maybe two or three Closer’s walking around connecting to calls as and when they are needed. Although predominantly young, these Closer’s are more experienced and clearly gifted social engineers.Within the rest of the office, we have IT guys, who do literally that, and then we have our inspirational and motivational boss, the head of the office. But there’s something else, because once the Sales Manager and Closer have done their bit, managed to get that first deposit – the victim is passed onto a third level – and this is somewhat mysterious – because this is where the real money is made for the scam call centres… the Retention Managers…
Anonymous Journalist (09:21)
Sales managers produce the first deposit. For example, one hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars, not much. And after that, the client who made a deposit is added to the database of retention managers, which is a different level of sales. Personally, I have not encountered them, because it is a very closed community. But according to my sources, we're talking about sales worth tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, the whole point of working in an office or call centre is to make sure that the client keeps investing more and more of their money, selling apartments, and taking out loans. This is how the offices make money. And these people get a lot of money, but I've never seen them, because they're usually sitting somewhere else. Nobody knows where.
Jack (10:10)
I came across this really interesting quote from the General Directorate for Combating Organised Crime in Bulgaria, Vladimir Dimitorov – he was speaking to Europol about a scam call centre that had been taken down in Bulgaria – he said that victims started with payments of 200 Euros, but more than 50% ended up losing tens of thousands – and a handful lost millions. And then back in 2020, Swedish news outlet Dagens Nyheter revealed an investigation into a group of companies, known as the Milton Group, which were based out of Kyiv and Georgia.
Jack (11:13)
They described it as a “Fraud Factory” targeting thousands of victims in more than 50 countries. This investigation reveals a little more is about retention managers – and one quote that stuck out was that they are “free to say or do anything” as long as they never reveal “that the investments are fake”. And the Retention managers get different levels of commission depending on the method of payment – for example, transfer by credit card – 4%. Western Union or Moneygram – 6%. Cryptocurrencies – 9%. The purpose behind this is because some a more difficult to trace than others.And if we take a look at the BBC investigation – it shows how quickly the money disappears into a tangled web of bitcoin wallets, transactions, exchanges and so on – the journalist put in $500 dollars of bitcoin – and they were able to track it, as it was broken up into smaller fractions and moved through a series of different wallets, all allegedly associated with the Milton Group – a lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency and fraud told the BBC that this flow of money suggested “large scale organised crime”. For those who made multiple payments, they were asked to send money to different bitcoin addresses each time – according to OCCRP – $5.9 million dollars of bitcoin disappeared into exchanges based in East Asia. Then inside the office there was a whiteboard, that listed the monthly targets for the retention managers, and bear in mind that this was from a few years ago - but this is where you see how much money is sucked into these companies by the retention managers – “The Russian market: $40,000. Spanish: $60,000. English: $100,000”. And If, as a Retention Manager, you don’t achieve 40% of your targets – you’re fired.
Jack (13:25)
Now, before going any further, I probably don’t need to tell you this, but scam call centres are not a “Ukrainian issue” – they’ve been around for years and it’s a global issue – back in the late 90s, members of the Gambino crime family in New York scammed people out of hundreds of millions through an elaborate phone fraud. In 2010 it was the turn of the Bonnano Crime Family and their “boiler rooms”, from where an investment scam earned them millions. And scam call centres still exist all over the world – in 2022, law enforcement from Latvia and Lithuania, alongside Europol dismantled a scam call centre network allegedly responsible for 108 million Euros of losses for victims – you can the rather dramatic footage of the raid on YouTube. In the US, the FBI recently estimated that US citizens had been scammed out of around $12 billion dollars in a single year by scam call centres in India alone. They’ve been found in Albania, Canada, Taiwan, Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Georgia, China, North Macedonia, Cambodia and so on...
Jack (15:39)
In September this year, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced they had taken down 11 scam operations and recovered $25 million dollars. And finally, we’ve already mentioned the investigation into the so called ‘Milton Group’. BBC Eye actually delved further into this group of companies and those alleged to be behind them – and they called that investigation The Billion dollar Scam.
Jack (17:05)
It’s all from a script – but also about how you deliver and perform it, making them trust you and manipulate them into doing something that is so clearly against their best interests. And it’s no different in the scam call centres we’re looking at in Ukraine – the Sales Managers, those entry level positions filled by students and young professionals, they go through training.
Anonymous Journalist (17:28)
There is a certain script in sales on how to behave. There is a way to start a conversation. Somehow, you have to make a person trust you, then collect information about their needs and make an effective sale accordingly. This is what the training is based on. Basic sales according to the company's script. It varies from company to company, but conceptually it is the same. And another important point. Ukrainians have this thing in our language - you know, there's Russian Russian and Ukrainian Russian. And Ukrainian Russian is different from Russian Russian. So, we also worked on speaking as much Russian as possible in real Russian. For example, we always pronounce the letter "h" instead of "g". Well, the simplest example is the letter "h" - "g". This is not taught. They pay attention to this, so that you don't say "h", you say "g".
Jack (18:25)
Now, this is really interesting – so, I’m an English speaker, and when I’m talking to another English speaker, say someone from Australia or America – sure I can understand what they’re saying but equally, I know that they have a different accent and different nuances of language. And so, this training that the new Sales Manager recruits go through, learning how to pronounce words in Russian like a Russian speaking Russian, rather than a Ukrainian speaking Russian is a really important part in the building of trust with a victim. Another way to build trust is through the number you call from – so let me ask you a question – how many of you answer the phone if the number doesn’t have the same country code as your own?
Anonymous Journalist (19:08)
As far as I understand, it's a specially created telephony that costs a lot of money. It's all arranged, all the calls are made via the internet, but the Russians see a Russian phone number to ensure that this works. As far as I understand, you need Russian SIM-cards.
Jack (19:24)
I’m not 100% sure of the technology used, some people talk about IP telephony – which pretty much does everything old telephone lines do but instead converts the information into digital signals and sends it via the internet instead. For example, voice over internet protocol or VoIP – we know that some Indian VoIP companies have been indicted in the US for allowing scam call centres to route calls through their systems.
Jack (20:44)
But most stories of call centre busts seem to list “SIM-cards” in the seized items, and in rather large numbers. 10,000 illegal SIM cards in Thailand; 22,000 in West Bengal and so on. Given the importance of SIM cards, perhaps something called a SIM Box or SIM Bank is used. These bits of hardware can hold hundreds of different SIM cards per machine, then each machine can be linked together to hold even more. The SIM cards used are often prepaid and each SIM connection is routed through the internet using VOIP – bypassing international network rates and making the calls appear local – costing the telecoms industry billions in lost revenue. Of course, these SIMs aren’t just for calling but also can be used to send out thousands and thousands of smishing text messages. So let’s say the scammer is using a SIM Box and its up and running – how do they find your number?
Anonymous Journalist (21:42)
There are a huge number of databases of banks, pharmacies, services, orders. They can be easily bought on the Darknet. Secondly, such call centres launch their own advertising products, saying that they are an investment company, and they offer their services. This is advertised on popular websites, and potential clients of this investment company, which, of course, does not exist, sign up. They leave their data on these websites, and then they get a call from this company, allegedly from this company.
Jack (22:16)
This is another example of how difficult it is to keep your data safe – all it takes is for one company with some kind of customer database to fall victim to a hacker – the SANS Institute recently released the results of a survey which showed hackers can usually exfiltrate data within the first five hours after gaining initial access to a network.All this gets me thinking, thinking about the people who work in these call centres – the students, the recent graduates or young professionals – What do they know about the work before they take the role?
Anonymous Journalist (22:52)
It depends on who you have worked for before. There are people who know about this area. There are people who can guess. There are people who have never heard of it at all. And when they understand, some of them just leave. It depends entirely on the person. But it's a good question, because, for example, the business coach who conducts training there, well, at least she did for us, she was very careful to say this in hints during training. It all depends on who is presenting the information and who is listening to it. And I'll give you an example to make it clearer. When I was studying there, there was a student, he was very young, green. So, on the third or fourth day, he asked her: "So how do these clients withdraw their money?" And the business trainer said, right in front of the whole audience, "They don't fucking withdraw it".
Jack (23:47)
A brutally honest response from that trainer – and in a way, you combine that response with the boss giving the motivational speech at the start of the day, you get an idea of the office environment. And it reminds me about this one video I saw on telegram, which was alleged to show a rather wild office party for one of the scam call centres in Ukraine…
Jack (24:12)
I mean, you can hear how rowdy everyone is - there is drinking, music…adult entertainers...certainly not like the office parties I’ve been too. Again, it’s got a very Wolf of Wall Street vibe – and that includes the work itself, because if you don’t make your quotas, you’re out – and so staff turnover is really high.
Anonymous Journalist (24:34)
I would describe this atmosphere as an artificial version of the American stock exchange before the crisis of 2008, but in a very simplistic and childish way, because the people who actually work there are children pretending to be adult investment experts. There are a lot of people there, seventy or even a hundred people can work in an office. It's a huge area, and they rent business centres, they can take up a whole floor. And people there communicate only within their own teams.
Jack (25:06)
And like any Stock Exchange, people are there for a simple reason – money. And there is a lot of money to be made – according to Truecaller, Americans lost nearly $30 BILLION dollars across 12 months from 2021-2022 – 1-in-3 US citizens reported that they had fallen for a phone scam at least once. In Hiya’s recent Global Call Threat Report Q2 2023, they highlighted that in Europe 40% of calls from non-contacts were suspected spam. In Argentina, 56% of calls were labelled as either nuisance or fraud calls. It was the same in Hong Kong, with 54%. Globally, Hiya observed 6.5 BILLION spam calls worldwide in three months – that’s over 70 MILLION calls every day.There is a load of different frauds being committed by these call centres – but the type we’re talking about in this episode is mainly a form of investment fraud – In Ukraine, we don’t know exactly HOW many there are, but there are certainly hundreds of these offices, some suspect thousands.This year there have been a number of raids on call centres across Ukraine – two in the Khmelnytskyi region of Ukraine, which focused on stealing cryptocurrency from mainly Canadian citizens. Two more centres in Lviv and Vinnytsia were taken down, these targeted victims across Europe. Police said that the criminal group behind the call centre also ran a number of phishing websites, luring people with discounted goods, making millions in the process. In Kharkiv, Ukrainian cyber police took down what they called “an organized group of criminals” – who were running an investment fraud scheme targeting mainly people in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. They created a website and a telegram channel and promised returns of 400-500% and had paid advertisements on social media companies.Now, we always want to know HOW much money these scam call centres are bringing in…and that’s the million-dollar question. Like with any illicit market, it’s clandestine by nature and therefore hard to measure – we do know that there was a raid on four call centres in the Kyiv and Lviv regions – the Ukrainian Cyber police seized 126 bank accounts and six cryptocurrency wallets – combining a total of $406,000 dollars – that’s just four – and that is just the money that was seized – it doesn’t include the money that has been laundered into assets or offshore accounts. And remember these centres can’t be cheap to run – the raid on the four call centres I mentioned a minute ago, police seized computer hardware estimated to be worth over $400,000 dollars – then of course, the office space is rented, even the entry level sales managers get paid relatively well, and they sometimes have a lot of staff - for example at the start of September, again Ukrainian Cyber police shut down a cryptocurrency investment fraud with scam call centres in Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kryvyi Rih,which targeted Ukrainian citizens as well as foreigners – these four centres reportedly had around 800 staff. But, despite some of these call centres targeting other European countries or those in central Asia – according to sources and also the currently sanctioned Russian bank, Sberbank, 90% of Ukrainian scam call centres now target Russians.
Jack (28:53)
And so we come to the important but complicated question – who is behind the call centres…If we look further afield, away from Ukraine, dangerous organized criminals are behind plenty of scam call centres – for example at the end of May, Mexican law enforcement found a gruesome discovery…
Jack (29:36)
It was reported that this call centre was run by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel – and the workers were killed because they tried to quit their jobs. In Cambodia, criminal gangs lure people under false pretences before trafficking them and forcing them into what’s been coined “cyber slavery” – the trafficking victims are FORCED to perform online scams – this is a topic we will do an episode on at some point. In Ukraine, similarly, organised crime is thought to be heavily involved…
Anonymous Journalist (30:07)
Well, like in any country, we have a lot of non-public businessmen whose photos are not even available on the Internet, and they are dollar millionaires. And nobody knows anything about them. Among these people there are real criminals for whom this type of business, if you can call it that, is quite significant. After they have received such criminal funds, they can invest them in some legal story, open a shopping mall or a restaurant. This way, they can diversify their profits by transferring them to a more legal channel. To answer the question, who are they? These are criminals, this is the mafia, who are also dollar millionaires. They are not public.
Jack (30:51)
And that’s always the problem with the study of organized crime – by its very nature it’s a hidden phenomenon. But we perhaps got a glimpse earlier this year in the Dnipropetrovsk region
Jack (31:03)
Ukrainian law enforcement arrested and charged 10 members of a “criminal organization”, including a prominent Vor v Zakone, or thief-in-law – known as Lasha Svan, - it was alleged they were organisers of scam call centres which primarily targeted Latvian citizens.And of course there were those alleged to be behind the Milton Group, the BBC named a bunch of people – but so far I have only seen one arrest relating to this group, when a man described as the “head of a fake investment platform called EverFX” was arrested by Spanish police in December last year.Now, do you remember the episode of Deep Dive we did on drug use on the frontline in Ukraine – we talked about this organized criminal group called Khimprom – they were born out of darknet marketplaces and have captured a significant proportion of the drug market in Ukraine. But equally, those who regularly listen to this podcast, will recognise that criminal organisations these days are rarely monolithic – they have a hand in multiple illicit markets – and that seems to be the case with Khimprom.So the person alleged to be behind KhimProm, is nicknamed the ‘Mexican’, because that’s apparently where this person is thought to be currently based. But alongside drugs, the ‘Mexican’ is said to be behind some call centres in Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kyiv and Odesa. And according to some, the ‘Mexican’ uses connections with corrupt police to initiate searches into rival call centres, so that they can swallow up the competition. Now, it must be said that this whole ‘Mexican’ story is rife with rumour, suspicion and contradiction – some articles talk about the person as if they were a misunderstood patriot, others say the ‘Mexican’ is behind call centres located in a building owned by a politician, where allegedly it'd been gathering intelligence for Russia. But then others have claimed that the ‘Mexican’ has set up a charitable fund that provides humanitarian assistance, others, of funding a “territorial defence force” in Kyiv - hoping that this will help smooth a possible return to Ukraine.The point is that it isn’t always easy to know exactly what’s going on – but it does bring me onto this idea of the “Patriotic Criminal” …
Jack (33:25)
So why are Russians being targeted disproportionately, well that seems obvious. But there are other reasons as well, remember earlier in the episode I said that, according to the Sberbank, 90% of call centres targeting Russians are based in Ukraine. Well, there is some logic behind this statement – Russians would be an easy target because of the language, many Ukrainians speak Russian. But also, according to Ukrainian law, a complainant must file a victims’ statement – at this moment – given Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine, the ability to give such a statement is somewhat difficult.And then you have collusion between criminal entities and elements of the state, which is hardly unheard of in Ukraine, just as it is in Russia – and according to some, there is an unwritten rule that as long as you aren’t targeting Ukrainians you’ll be left alone.
Anonymous Journalist (34:16)
Well, in general, there is a certain ethics code, you know, particularly during a large-scale war. So those who work on Ukrainians, and there are such cases, because if you look at the press releases of our law enforcement agencies, this does exist, but its volume is extremely small. Because it's a bad manners to do a thing like that, working against your own citizens. It's unethical.
Jack (34:44)
If you read through some of the research the GI have done in Ukraine over the past year or so, you’ll see this idea of the ‘Patriotic Criminal’ – in Odesa, pro-Russian criminals have either left or gone underground, and pro-Ukrainian criminals have turned “hyper-patriotic” – even reported to be patrolling the streets WITH law enforcement. Some other Vory, once in the occupied eastern part of Ukraine have since crossed the line and have authorized criminals under their charge to fight AGAINST Russia.And so, we come back to the call centres – where they are also co-opting patriotic feelings to find new workers - I came across this one job advert on Telegram – and it led with things like “Do you want to help your country undermine the economy of the aggressor country?” and “the work is aimed at profit by emptying the wallets of moral monsters who are trying to destroy our motherland every day!” and finally “Let’s bring victory as close as possible with our own efforts”.So does this mean that Russia’s war against Ukraine has weaponized scam calls? – The Russian FSB certainly claim that to be the case. And back in April, Russian media also claimed that elderly Russians were being tricked by scammers into setting fire to military offices and officials’ cars and shouting pro-Ukrainian slogans. There was this one video which came from a Russian media telegram channel…
Jack (36:28)
Now, its alleged that the person is on the phone to the scammer as she is about to be arrested. She had been swindled out of a lot of money, including the selling of her house. But according to the reporting, the scammers said that she would get her money back if she set fire to a military recruitment centre using Molotov cocktails – this video shows that she called the scammer after starting the fire…And its not just the elderly, but the young as well, a 22 year old received a call from someone claiming to be a police investigator, who accused the person of sending money to a pro-Ukrainian organisation and that he would be accused of treason, unless he transfers a load of money to the scammers, as well as take out loans to again pass to the scammers – as a “fine for disclosing state secrets”. He was then instructed to set fire to an ATM because it contained a device that transferred money to “terrorists” from Ukraine. But again, I want to reiterate that these claims came from the Russian FSB – and as usual Ukrainian authorities have not commented on them.
Jack (37:39)
Finally, I’m reminded of someone in Ukraine I spoke with recently about this topic and it was interesting to hear their perspective – for example they pointed out that due to Russia’s full-scale invasion, the economy has largely been subsidised by Western countries – but, as they said, “it is mostly loans that we have to pay back. This is not our money.” And that’s right Ukrainian GDP has fallen 30% - the economy has relied on loans from the IMF, the US, Europe and the UK.The illicit money gained through these scam call centres in Ukraine – was described to me as “like our money, it’s not loans” – of course, some of the money is siphoned off by the criminal groups into the offshore world or cryptocurrency, and of course this isn’t taxed. But the salaries paid to the employees is spent in Ukraine and goes back into the economy, the tax is on the expenditure – indeed in recent days it was revealed that the Ukrainian economy actually grew for the first time since the war began.But that being said, we shouldn’t sugar coat it, this money is stolen from victims and goes largely into the pockets of organized criminals to poison society in all the ways they do. The use of scam call centres is on the rise around the world– tens of millions of these calls target people every day, billions of dollars are stolen each year and its not a victimless crime – the damage is not just economic, people have committed suicide as a result of investment frauds like these – scam call centres, wherever they are, are a blight.
Jack (39:37)
That’s it for this episode of Deep Dive – I’d like to thank our anonymous journalist and their “journalistic experiment” and also colleagues in Ukraine who helped with some of the research for this episode.All the reading material to accompany this episode will be in the podcast notes. In addition to that, if you want to check out more organized crime research from across the world – head over to our website – globalinitiative.net.
We’ve also just launched the second iteration of the Global Organized Crime Index – which looks at the levels of criminality and resilience across 193 countries – it’s a fascinating resource and its totally free to access at ocindex.net.This has been Deep Dive from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime – Thanks for listening.