An organised crime 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 ads on Facebook and Google, and are believed to have continued contacting victims in recent weeks.
UK citizens were the hardest hit, accounting for about £9m of the total losses. The fraud was uncovered through a leak of call centre data obtained by Swedish broadcaster SVT and shared with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the Guardian and other media partners. The leak contains over 1m recordings, offering rare insight into the scammers' operations.
Operating from three office blocks in Tbilisi, a group of about 85 call centre agents referred to themselves as 'skameri' (Georgian for scammers). Since May 2022, they duped around 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 lost more than £162,000.
In one call, a former NHS doctor in her 70s living in sheltered housing in London 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 spent their proceeds on Rolex watches, Range Rovers and lavish staff parties.
The data shows that new online banks and payment services were heavily used to process payments. Revolut was the most mentioned bank in an internal spreadsheet, with 119 of 403 listed UK victims using it. Kroo and Chase were also involved. The UK government's Online Safety Act has been passed, but sections relating to fraudulent advertising are not expected to come into force until next year.
