International network of financial fraud reaches Peru and other Latin American countries | summons

Luxury cars line the parking lot of the upscale Mandarin Plaza shopping mall in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, while its wealthy owners flaunt their wealth in their jewelry and designer clothing stores.

But hidden in its upper floors, protected by armed guards and under the constant surveillance of security cameras, it sells a very different product.

Sitting elbow to elbow under fluorescent lights, a multilingual army of call center employees sell get-rich-quick dreams around the world in the form of cryptocurrency and stock investments for a company called the Milton Group, allegedly controlled by one man. Georgian-Israeli with links to former and current officials and ministers in Albania, Ukraine and Georgia.

This entire operation has been exposed due to a set of documents delivered to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter by an informant inside the call center, and shared with OCCRP, which in turn has brought together journalists from 21 countries around the world and dozens of media outlets such as Convoca.pe to expose the inner workings of a scam fabricated from a call center that harnesses the power of social media to operate on a global scale.

Armed with a list of more than 1,000 people who were targeted by the call center, journalists spoke to more than 180 victims, revealing a trail of blighted lives from Sweden's Arctic Circle to the Ecuadorian Amazon and various countries in Latin America such as Peru, passing through small industrial cities in the Balkans and in the main cities of the world such as London and Sydney.

The stories were surprisingly similar. Many victims first came into contact with the scam through Facebook ads that promised extraordinary returns on investments. After entering their contact details to find out more, the victims would be inundated with sales calls. They would make a small “investment” that would quickly return impressive but false returns. Requests to withdraw all full funds were never honored.

A screen shown to a Milton Group victim, mimicking a real investment. The gains and losses were completely false. (Credit: Alexander Mahmoud / DN)

The hardest hit were preyed upon by the call center's “holding” specialists, whose job it was to invent new ways to extract more money from the victims, often through great psychological pressure. Some were harassed to obtain large loans, threatened with bogus letters from UK financial regulators demanding tax, or contacted by bogus lawyers offering to help them get their money back, for a fee.In the most extreme cases, withholding specialists Milton Group would convince victims to install software on their computers that would allow scammers to control them remotely and steal more money in the process, with losses for some exceeding $200,000.

The victims, misled by foreign names and addresses, and promises of sky-high profits, believed they were on the phone with a legitimate investment business based in Western Europe. Little did they suspect that the people on the other end of the line were mostly young Ukrainians or Middle Eastern and African immigrants in kyiv living in Ukraine.

Some tried to report their losses to the police in their countries, but the security forces were unable to connect the dots. Cybercrime units in several countries affected by the Milton Group call center, including Spain and Italy, told OCCRP and its partners that these types of cross-border frauds were on their radar but difficult to detect, often they go unreported and require law enforcement cooperation, which is rarely the priority for minor crimes.

Surveillance of a global call center (Preparation: OCCCR)

However, Swedish police have opened an investigation into Milton Group based on extensive evidence from the whistleblower, and have been in contact with Europol for assistance in conducting a cross-border investigation.

"Everything this company does is fake," said Alexey, the whistleblower. (His real name cannot be used for his own safety, as he is cooperating with the police.) "They just steal people's money," he added.

The whistleblower noted that staff were told the Kiev hub received around €65 million in sales in 2019, a Milton Group record. To celebrate, the company's leaders threw an extravagant New Year's party around the novel "The Great Gatsby," about a Jazz-Age smuggling artist and con man. Under the neon lights, hundreds of Milton employees watched contortionists and fire dancers perform, and were awarded prizes including cars for their salesmanship.

The whistleblower (Credit: Alexander Mahmoud / DN)

The company is also reportedly linked to other call centers in Albania, Georgia and North Macedonia that employ hundreds more people.

While it's impossible to determine that every investment that passed through downtown Kiev was fraudulent, reporters from DN and the OCCRP network spoke to more than 180 victims from Milton's client database, who confirmed that they had lost their money to investment scams. Some held out the hope of being able to withdraw their "earnings" or were able to withdraw some funds, probably in an attempt to encourage new investment. Among them were dozens of citizens of Peru and five other Latin American countries.

A hidden camera photo from the Milton Group New Years party (Credit: DN)