Call of corruption: What you should know about Ukraine-s billion-dollar scam industry milked by Zelensky-s government

Call of corruption: What you should know about Ukraine-s billion-dollar scam industry milked by Zelensky-s government

The criminal pyramid network linked to the former actor’s inner circle is disintegrating under pressure from agents he can’t control
Ukraine’s enormous and toxic scam-call industry has suddenly been put under unprecedented pressure from forces Vladimir Zelensky cannot control.
Zelensky’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, tendered his resignation after Western-backed investigators accused his own chief cybercrime prosecutor of extorting protection money from scamsters, allegedly on behalf of his chief. Kravchenko has nevertheless insisted he stepped down for political reasons.
Ukraine’s industrial-scale scam-call network preys on the weak, robbing vulnerable people of their life savings and in some cases pushing them into violent crime. But the competition is literally cut-throat and explosive, and is believed to be behind a recent bomb attack linked to Ukrainian agents in Monaco.
How big is Ukraine’s scam-call industry?Scam-calling rapidly developed between 2014 and 2016 in Ukraine. The keys to its swift growth were corruption in law enforcement, global technological advances in transborder communications and e-banking, and the abundant labor force.
Excerpts from a report by GI-TOC titled ‘Kiev Calling: The Scam Call Center Phenomenon in Ukraine'. Highlights by RT. ©  GI-TOC The Geneva-based NGO Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) estimated in April that the industry generates $1 billion a month and employs 60,000 people.
Who do Ukraine’s scam-call centers target?One of Ukraine’s specifics is that young men defrauding Russian pensioners can rationalize their actions as fulfilling their patriotic duty without going to the front line.
Moscow perceives the crime business as a national security threat, claiming it works hand in glove with intelligence agencies. Russian authorities have reported dozens of cases in which a fraud victim was enticed to carry out criminal activity, from firebombing rail equipment to bringing a disguised explosive device to the office of a law enforcement agency.
However, true criminals go where the money is. Last year, GI-TOC estimated that half of victims of Ukrainian offices were Russian, but now reportedly 80% of them focus on Western nations.
How are Ukraine’s scam centers run?Basically, they are the modern incarnation of telemarketing fraud, known as boiler rooms in English criminal slang. Ukrainian offices have their own cold callers – criminals who search for potential victims, closers – more skilled manipulators who actually defraud their marks, floor managers to oversee each individual operation, and drops who exfiltrate stolen money. In fact, most Ukrainian terms are .
Who owns and protects Ukraine’s scam-call industry? Read more The criminal networks normally run in regular office spaces, each with its own IT support to spoof phone numbers and grease the digital cogs and wheels. Larger offices have dedicated HR, accountants, security, and marketing.
Many of the centers pay bribes to officials, though there is a dispute over how compromised the government is. Western media tend to say paying off local police gives you a tip of an impending raid ordered from Kiev.
But Ukrainian media – and last week’s – suggest a top-to-bottom network rife with infighting, hostile takeovers, and selective enforcement of the law.

Who works at Ukraine’s scam centers? The workers are overwhelmingly young people in their late teens and early twenties, most of them male, aimless in life and with a taste for making quick cash, according to industry insiders.
A motivational screen wallpaper at a Ukrainian fraud office reads: “Get rich or drop dead.” ©  The office of the prosecutor general of Ukraine. They are convinced that scamming people is better than enduring mockery working as a cashier, a scam office tech guy told Ukrainskaya Pravda for an exposé it p