In this ordinary building in the business district of Kiev, Ukraine, around 150 “financial advisors” work the phones all night to convince Canadians to send them thousands of dollars. On the other end of the phone, their “clients” see on a dashboard the cryptocurrency investments offered to them by financial advisors, encouraging them to invest more and more money, call after call.
None of this is true. The data on the dashboard is just an excuse. Financial advisors are actually professional fraudsters. Your customers are your victims. And every dollar they invest ends up in the pockets of criminal networks.
The first requirement to be good at this job is to gain the trust of the victim, explains Alex*, a whistleblower who previously worked in similar call centers. He requested that his name be kept secret for fear of reprisals.
Sometimes people are alone and have no friends or family. We talk to them about everything: politics, money, their dreams, the weather. We become her friend. And friends, we can trust them. They can talk for hours, he says.
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Alex started working for one of the fraudulent call centers in Kyiv in 2019.
Photo: Radio-Canada
Alex has previously worked with European media to shed light on this massive fraud industry that allegedly steals billions of dollars from victims around the world every year from hundreds of call centers, including in Eastern Europe.
Now he really wants to send a message to the Canadian authorities.
I think Canada is the number one destination. This is the main goal as Canadian law enforcement does not prosecute scammers.
Victims are lured on social networks
As the Décrypteurs revealed in two previous reports prepared in collaboration with La Facture, the entry point for this scam is usually an advertisement broadcast on social networks.
The typical fraudulent advertisement claims that a well-known personality such as animators Guy A. Lepage or Normand Brathwaite has discovered an easy way to make money thanks to a new platform. ™Cryptocurrency Investment.
More recently, such misleading ads have also been discovered with doctored videos of businessman Elon Musk and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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These fraudulent advertisements exploit the images of celebrities, media outlets, and well-known brands.
Photo: Facebook / Émilie Robert
The victim who clicks on the ad is redirected to a fake article from a Canadian media outlet such as La Presse or CBC or CTV asking them To for more information. . The potential victim quickly receives a call from a financial advisor who is actually a scammer trained to trick them into making an initial deposit of $250.
Over the course of days, weeks, or even months, the scammer encourages the victim to invest more and more money. When the victim attempts to withdraw their supposed winnings, the financial advisor disappears and often only then does the victim realize that it was a mirage.
A documentary that examines fraudulent call centers in depth will be broadcast on Saturday February 24th at 11am on the Décrypteurs program on ICI RDI.
Sophisticated criminals
These cryptocurrency scams are not the work of amateurs, but rather the work of sophisticated and well-funded criminal networks.
To the uninitiated, people who work in this industry give the impression that they run traditional fintech or financial companies, when in reality they are fraudsters. It's not about finance, but about organized crime, says Mark Solomons, principal investigator at IFW Global, a private investigation firm that provides a fraud investigation service.
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Fake financial advisors work in offices that may resemble those of financial technology companies.
Photo: Emilie Robert
Mark Solomons has led multiple investigations into fraudulent call centers on behalf of fraud victims, working with authorities in various countries to recover stolen funds, as well as conduct raids and stop criminals. According to him, Canada is the second most important destination of these fraudsters after Australia.
These criminals love Canada. Canadians are friendly, relatively wealthy, have a relatively high savings rate and fairly good retirement savings. In addition, there is a federal government and law enforcement system that inevitably leads to inefficiency, lack of coordination and inadequate information sharing, the analysis says. ™Private investigator.
It is very unlikely that fraudsters will be investigated or charged. And even if we do investigate, there is a risk that it will be dealt with by a financial regulator that has neither the resources nor the clout of the police, continues Mark Solomons.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to combat the problem. On the contrary, countries such as Germany worked with the Kosovo authorities to arrest 18 people (new window) with connections to call centers in 2021 and obtain extradition orders for at least six of them.
At the request of the German authorities, Europol also carried out searches at four call centers last year in cooperation with the Bulgarian, Serbian and Cypriot authorities (New Window). At least 14 people were arrested in connection with this operation.
There's a reason why these call centers are increasingly targeting Germans: Germany is making a concerted effort to track down, investigate, extradite and prosecute criminals.
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, more than $309 million was stolen from Canadians through investment fraud in 2023, an amount nine times higher than in 2020. More than half of that amount was lost to cryptocurrency fraud, and only 5 % to 10% of fraud cases are reported to the Anti-Fraud Center. In short, this is the type of fraud that caused the most losses in Canada last year.
This money is siphoned out of the Canadian economy and sent to criminals in other countries. “It is possible to stop it, but to do that we need to send a sufficiently strong message of deterrence,” argues Mark Solomons.
Canada is very adept at identifying, prosecuting, convicting and extraditing criminals when it comes to drugs or firearms. Why not fraud? asks the private detective.
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According to Mark Solomons, Canada is a prime target for scammers.
Photo: Emilie Robert
The Canadian ministers responsible for this dossier did not want to grant us an interview. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc's office told us he was unavailable and referred us to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly's office did not respond to our interview requests.
The RCMP declined our request for an interview. She referred us to the Anti-Fraud Center, whose job is to collect information about fraud and pass information on to other government agencies. Please note, however, that the Center has no authority to intervene directly.
However, RCMP spokesperson Kim Chamberland issued a written statement saying that the RCMP has established teams specializing in cryptocurrencies and that it has assisted the Ministry of Justice in amending the Criminal Code to exclude cryptocurrencies used for criminal purposes to be able to better investigate and better seize. These efforts reportedly resulted in the seizure of $6 million in drugs, equipment and proceeds of crime.
A fraudster at work
Alex started working for one of the fraudulent call centers in Kyiv in 2019, believing it to be a legitimate investment company. But after a month, he realized it was a scam. He decided to document everything from the inside so that he could pass this information on to the authorities.
With the help of journalists from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a consortium of European journalists who investigate corruption and financial fraud, Alex was able to go to work at the call center with a camera hidden in a watch.
In the sequences he sent us, we see a fraudster at work. One William Bradley – a pseudonym given to his victims – was tasked with training Alex to be a better con artist.
We see the 22-year-old young man calling one of his victims on December 31st. I want to tell you something important. I am really happy to have met you this year. And I want you to have a great 2020. “We will do good business together,” he said with headphones screwed to his head.
“I hope you and your family have a great year in 2020 and achieve all your dreams,” he added.
During the call, the scammer does not ask for any money, but only speaks to the victim. That's part of the tactic, explains Alex. He pretends to be a friend. Not just a financial advisor, but a friend, he said.
After hanging up, William Bradley confesses to Alex that he stole more than $150,000 from the victim he had just spoken to. Did you fuck him twice? Alex asks him in the secretly filmed video. Much more than twice! I fucked him six or seven times! says the cheater with a laugh.
It was impossible to contact William Bradley to get his version of the facts.
Canada: easy and profitable destination
Alex and the experts contacted for this report agree that Canada is a prime target for these international scammers. The decryptors were able to observe this during an infiltration that began in chat rooms on Telegram.
We were able to join a dozen chat rooms where call centers post job openings to attract new employees. Canadian flags abound in these advertisements.
Hot traffic from Canada! Rapid career development, we can read in one such advertisement, which promises commissions of between 6% and 12% for any agent who manages to attract more than $20,000 from his clients. The job offer even promises a chauffeur service for employees.
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Call center job postings on Telegram contain many Canadian flags.
Photo: Telegram / Émilie Robert
We were also able to view a document detailing the terms of employment of fake financial advisors who steal Canadians' money. The base salary is $1,200 per month and $1,500 per month for those who manage to defraud more than $100,000 per month, in addition to a commission of up to 10% of the amounts defrauded. ©s.
Employees can also receive bonuses of up to $30,000 for every $300,000 defrauded. According to global economic data provider CEIC, the average salary in Ukraine in 2022 was about 700 Canadian dollars per month.
With Alex's help, we applied for a position at the call center in Kiev mentioned at the beginning of this article. After a few basic questions about our work experience, one of the call center managers, a certain man named Leo, contacted us for an interview.
During the interview, Leo confirmed that the call center targeted Canadians and did not hide the fraudulent nature of its activities.
Look, how long has this business model been working? We use the same ads and everything. “Stupid people are always looking for investment opportunities to make money by doing nothing, and that will make you more money,” Leo remarked candidly.
It never changes. “I don’t know why, but it still works,” the scammer added.