Page 28 - WBG Dec 2025

FEATURE
SCAM EMPIRE

About the ‘Scam Empire’ Project
Scam Empire is a collaborative investigation by OCCRP, Swedish Television (SVT), and 30 other media partners from
multiple countries. Based on 1.9 terabytes of leaked data obtained by SVT, reporters expose two groups of call centers,
based in Israel, Eastern Europe, and the country of Georgia, whose employees have convinced at least 32,000 people
across the world to make “investments” totalling at least $275 million.

Behind the Scam:

How Fraudsters Use

Social Media, Software,

and Shell Companies

to Steal Millions

Professional scammers call upon a global network 1. Catching Victims
of service providers to execute their work in a
sophisticated, streamlined fashion. Here are some of
their names.

At the heart of many modern-day scams is the
call center: sleek offices staffed by manipulative,
multilingual agents who spend their days trying to
convince victims from around the world to pour funds
into fake investment opportunities.

These call centers, however, do not operate in a
vacuum. They draw upon an entire ecosystem of
service providers who help facilitate each step of the
process — and get a cut of the profits.

Here, we present dozens of companies from around
the world whose services were used by the two large-
scale fraud operations exposed by Scam Empire,
one based in Israel and Europe and the other in the Affiliate marketing companies
country of Georgia.
To catch their victims, the call centers rely on external marketers who post
online phishing ads. Promoting snazzy investment opportunities that promise
It was not always possible to determine the extent to big returns, the ads target specific audiences and often feature fabricated
which these companies were aware of the scams their endorsements from local celebrities or media outlets.
services helped facilitate.
From external marketers who harvest victims’ data Rather than advertise a real product, the goal of the marketers is to collect
to money transfer services used to extract their cash, data: Potential victims who click on their links are brought to landing
these players range from legitimate businesses pages where they are asked to enter their contact information. This data is
exploited by the scammers to entities that appear then funneled to the call centers, who compensate the marketers for every
purpose-built to help them carry out their nefarious individual who goes on to make a deposit.
work.
While the extent to which these marketers are aware of who they are servicing
Below we have organized these providers by their could not be confirmed, many go to great lengths to conceal the nature of
role in the three major phases of a scam: catching their work by operating through anonymous shell companies, using aliases in
victims, winning their trust, and taking the money.
encrypted chats, and receiving their payments in cryptocurrencies.
26 W.A.D Beyond Global