Scam call centers have been a scourge for years, conning ordinary people around the world out of hundreds of billions of dollars. Touting fake celebrity endorsements and deploying the latest technological buzzwords, skilled fraudsters lure victims into handing over their life savings for imaginary “investments.” And they operate with near-impunity: they’re hard to track and harder to prosecute. Their inner workings usually remain a mystery.But not anymore. An unprecedented leak of nearly two terabytes of data from two major scam operations — thousands of hours of phone calls, screen recordings, spreadsheets, and other files — has enabled journalists to enter the scammers’ world and even to watch them at work.It took a months-long collaborative effort by dozens of media partners to scour through this trove of evidence. The result is an unprecedented look into the heart of one of the world’s darkest industries.This is Scam Empire.
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project