Thread by @OCCRP

NEW INVESTIGATION: We uncovered an international scam that used Facebook ads and an army of multilingual salespeople to defraud people around the world out of millions of dollars. Many of the victims have been left in financial ruin. 1/
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Our partners on this investigation identified this fraud factory, known as Milton Group, thanks to a whistleblower we are calling “Alexey” to ensure his safety. 2/
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Before Alexey stepped forward, he was one of the hundreds of call center workers who defrauded people for a living. The workers had no illusions. Some even seemed to embrace the role of villain, bragging about “f**king” people into massive debt. 3/ occrp.org/en/fraud-facto…

At a training session for new salespeople, a trainer told an undercover reporter that the company’s goal was for customers “to lose their money in a realistic way.”

When asked why, she laughed: “It’s naive to ask, to be honest. When they lose the money, it stays with us.” 4/

The scam went as follows: After clicking on a Facebook ad and filling out a contact form, victims would get inundated with sales calls pressuring them to invest in fake financial products. These would always garner big returns on screen — but none in real life. 5/

The worst cases involved “retention” specialists, top salespeople who used psychological pressure to convince their targets to take out loans to invest even more. Victims who tried to get their money back were contacted by a fake lawyer who offered to help – for a fee. 6/

In extreme cases, retention specialists would coax victims into installing software on their computers that allowed the call center to control them remotely. Some lost more than $200,000. 7/
occrp.org/en/fraud-facto…

Alexey and his colleagues had no background in the financial products they purported to sell. Instead, they were trained to sell “emotions.” Their strategy, and the emotions they attempted to elicit, changed depending on the nationality of their target. 8/
occrp.org/en/fraud-facto…

Scandinavians were mostly “old people” who just needed someone to talk to, according to the scam’s operators. 9/

On the other hand, people from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, like to believe they know everything and see their countries as the best in the world, according to Milton Group. Salespeople were advised to pump them up. 10/ occrp.org/en/fraud-facto…

The CEO of Milton Group, Jacob Keselman, calls himself the “Wolf of Kyiv” on his Instagram account, where he can be found posing with guns and sports cars. But as with many allegedly criminal enterprises, the identity of the group’s owners is less clear. 11/

One of the suspected owners is David Todua, a Georgian-Israeli businessman who has financial ties with political leaders in Georgia, including the country's former chief of financial police and an agriculture minister who faced bribery charges in 2013. 12/

Todua also owns Naspay, a Cyprus-based payment platform that processed many of the fraudulent “investments” that victims handed over to Milton Group. 13/

We don’t know exactly how much money Milton Group extracted from its victims. The whistleblower, Alexey, told OCCRP and partners that Todua once bragged that the firm brought in over $50M in 2019. 14/

If you work for Milton Group, or similar call center operation, we’ve love to hear from you. And we take your security and confidentiality very seriously.

You can contact OCCRP journalists at [e-mail] or via SecureDrop. 15/ occrp.org/en/aboutus/sec…