#LAVISH SOFTWARE SCAM INSTALL#
#LAVISH SOFTWARE SCAM FULL#

“You can log in to a page where you can see how much money you have invested and a graph that shows the development. Nunzia Ciardi, Italy’s chief police officer in the fight against cyber-crime, said she believed there was still massive underreporting of the problem because most victims were too ashamed to admit they had been scammed.Īleksander Fjeldvær, head of cyber crime for Norway’s biggest bank, DNB, said banks there were vigilant, but often struggled to convince customers that they were being scammed due to how realistic the fraudsters’ technology was, and how intense their psychological manipulation. National cyber-crime units who have spoken to OCCRP and partners say they are aware of the problem and working closely with other authorities.īut many of the victims of Milton Group interviewed by OCCRP and its partners either did not report their losses to local police or found them uninterested in pursuing an investigation. They were also told to avoid calling Israeli, Ukrainian, or Belgian citizens. Perhaps because of this, Milton employees were told not to target victims in the US, the whistleblower said. US law enforcement has been aggressive in pursuing these scammers, and last year convicted Lee Elbaz, the former CEO of Israel-based Yukom Communications, who was found guilty of orchestrating a $145-million binary options fraud scheme that operated very similarly to Milton Group. (It was unclear whether this center might be linked to Milton Group.) The source said Spanish police was investigating a number of these suspected call-center scam groups, including one in Tirana, Albania, that was taking in 10 million euros a week, or more than half a billion euros a year. A Spanish police source told Madrid-based El Confidencial that scammers then began to “export” their tactics from Israel to countries like Ukraine, Bulgaria, Albania, and Cyprus. Israel was the epicenter for these call-center scams until the country banned its vast binary trading industry in 2017. They had no inkling that the people on the other end of the line were largely young Ukrainians or Middle Eastern and African migrants in Kyiv. The victims, fooled by foreign names and addresses, and assurances of sky-high returns, believed they were on the phone with a legitimate investment business based in Western Europe.

#LAVISH SOFTWARE SCAM INSTALL#

In the most extreme cases, Milton Group’s retention specialists would convince victims to install software on their computers that allowed the scammers to control them remotely, and steal more money in the process.

Some were harassed into taking out huge loans, threatened by forged letters from UK financial regulators demanding taxes, or contacted by fake lawyers offering to help get their money back - for yet another fee. Those worst affected were preyed upon by the call center’s “retention” desk, whose job was to conjure up new ways to extract more money, often through brutal psychological pressure.

#LAVISH SOFTWARE SCAM FULL#

But requests to withdraw the full funds were not honored.Ī screen shown to a Milton Group victim, mimicking a real investment. They would make a small “investment” that quickly yielded impressive - but fake - profits. After entering their contact details to find out more, victims would be deluged with high-pressure sales calls. Many first came into contact with the scam through Facebook ads promising remarkable returns on investments. Now, a cache of documents handed to the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter by a whistleblower from inside the call center, and shared with OCCRP, exposes the inner workings of this type of fraud: an old-fashioned boiler-room scam that leverages the power of social media to operate on a global scale.Īrmed with a list of over 1,000 people targeted by the call center, reporters from 21 countries and dozens of media outlets spoke to more than 180 victims, revealing a trail of ruined lives from Sweden’s Arctic Circle to the Ecuadorian Amazon, passing through small industrial towns in the Balkans and major world cities like London and Sydney. Sitting elbow-to-elbow under fluorescent lights, a multi-lingual army of call center staff hawk get-rich-quick dreams across the world in the form of cryptocurrency and stock investments for a company called Milton Group. Luxury cars line the parking lot of the upscale Mandarin Plaza mall in Kyiv, while their well-heeled owners flaunt their wealth in its jewellery and designer clothes stores.īut hidden on its upper floors, protected by armed guards and under the constant surveillance of security cameras, a very different product is being sold.

Lavish software scam