Every evening, about 150 people enter a building in Kyiv to work in a call centre.
Their only job: to steal the life savings of Canadians through a variety of investment scams, according to a whistleblower who used to work in the industry.
Alex, who is from Eastern Europe, reached out to Radio-Canada and helped the public broadcaster infiltrate the Kyiv call centre in order to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the fraudsters operate.
Alex wanted to speak to Canadian journalists because he says this country has quietly become a target of choice — largely because Canadian authorities haven’t done much to stop these types of scams.
largely because Canadian authorities havent done much
I feel like this is a common theme.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The building on Terasa Schevchenko Boulevard is just one of hundreds of fraudulent call centres that have sprung up in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, run by a network of about two dozen criminal groups operating worldwide, says “Alex,” the whistleblower.
Alex, who is from Eastern Europe, reached out to Radio-Canada and helped the public broadcaster infiltrate the Kyiv call centre in order to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the fraudsters operate.
They usually feature a photo of a famous Canadian — such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre or former Dragon’s Den star Kevin O’Leary — touting a new investment scheme.
Over the course of days, weeks and sometimes months, the financial adviser manipulates the victim over the phone into “investing” ever larger amounts of money, steadily bleeding their life savings dry.
At the request of German authorities, Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, also carried out raids last year on four call centres across Bulgaria, Serbia and Cyprus.
“There’s a reason why the scammers are increasingly not targeting German victims, because Germany has made concerted efforts to detect, investigate, extradite and prosecute offenders,” Solomons said.
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