An organised network operating from Georgia has defrauded thousands of savers from the UK, Europe and Canada out of $35m (£27m) using deepfake videos and fake news articles featuring celebrities such as Martin Lewis, Zoe Ball and Ben Fogle. The scammers promoted fraudulent cryptocurrency and investment schemes through adverts on Facebook and Google, despite the UK government promising to outlaw such ads three years ago.
UK citizens were the hardest hit, accounting for about £9m of the total losses. The fraud was exposed by a leak of call centre data to Swedish broadcaster SVT, shared with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Guardian. The data reveals that since May 2022, around 85 call centre agents operating from three offices in Tbilisi have duped about 6,000 people globally.
Of the 2,000 victims who lost the largest sums, 652 were based in the UK. The most-called UK victim, a retired London Stock Exchange employee, spent over 135 hours on the phone and was persuaded to part with more than £162,000. In one call, a former NHS doctor in her 70s living in sheltered housing pleaded: “I’ve used up every penny of my savings, I have nothing.” She lost about £50,000 and is thought to have died shortly after her final contact with the scammers last summer.
The scammers used affiliate marketers to place fake adverts, often referencing Elon Musk, and targeted victims through online banks such as Revolut, Kroo and Chase. The UK’s Online Safety Act, which could fine platforms for scam ads, is not expected to be fully active until next year. Cases of authorised push payment fraud rose by 12% in 2023, according to UK Finance.
