Scam Empire Exposed: How 85 Young Con Artists Stole $275 Million From 32,000 Victims Worldwide

TBILISI, GEORGIA — March 10, 2026

She flew to her own wedding in a helicopter. Diamonds. Dior. Dubai vacations. Instagram posts soaked in luxury. She was 26 years old. Her name was not Mary Roberts. That was just the alias she used to steal the life savings of thousands of people she would never meet.

When investigators finally unmasked her, she deleted her social media and disappeared. But it was too late. The data had already been leaked. The investigation had already been published. And the world was already watching.

This is the story of Scam Empire, one of the most explosive investigative revelations of 2025 and 2026, and the criminal network it brought crashing down.

The Leak That Cracked Everything Open

It began with data. An enormous, staggering amount of it.

An unprecedented leak of nearly two terabytes of data from two major scam operations gave journalists thousands of hours of phone calls, screen recordings, spreadsheets, and other files, enabling reporters to enter the scammers’ world and watch them at work. The Daily Star

The investigation, titled Scam Empire, was published by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project alongside Sweden’s SVT and more than 30 international media partners. It took eight months of painstaking forensic work by 32 journalists across multiple countries to turn that mountain of data into a full picture of one of the world’s darkest criminal industries.

What they found was jaw-dropping.

The Office Next to the Spy Headquarters

The Tbilisi-based call center is run by a firm called A.K. Group and employs approximately 85 people. It generated $35.3 million from more than 6,100 victims worldwide since May 2022, according to the Scam Empire investigation. Prothomalo

The location of the operation was almost unbelievable. The Tbilisi-based call center was located just meters from the State Security Service headquarters. Al Jazeera A criminal fraud operation, running in plain sight, directly beside the building housing Georgia’s most powerful intelligence agency.

Based on the 1.9 terabytes of leaked data obtained by SVT, reporters identified two networks of call centers operating from Israel, Eastern Europe, and Georgia. Their employees convinced 32,000 people globally to make fraudulent investments totaling at least $275 million. The Daily Star

The victims were ordinary people. Pensioners. Factory workers. Families who had spent decades saving money that vanished in a single phone call.

The Scammers Who Called Themselves Skameri

The cruelty was not incidental. It was cultivated.

In Tbilisi, call center agents openly referred to themselves as skameri, using fake identities, forged documents, and deceptive advertising to swindle victims out of their savings. The Daily Star

One Canadian factory worker named Marcel Deschamps was targeted by an agent posing as a professional crypto expert who convinced him to invest large sums in fake digital assets, never allowing him to withdraw his money. When he realised what had happened, the agent mocked him, called him stupid, and boasted that her alias would never be exposed.

The scammers went so far as to encourage desperate victims to take their own lives. One Georgian resident who followed the investigation said: “The scale of their cruelty is astonishing. Telling someone, go kill yourself. That makes them, in a way, potential murderers. This is not just theft.” Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha

Meanwhile, the agents lived like royalty. Helicopter weddings. Designer clothes. Luxury holidays. All of it paid for by the retirement funds and life savings of people who had trusted a stranger on the phone.

The Spy Chief Who Kept Them Safe

The most explosive chapter of this investigation was not about the scammers. It was about who protected them.

Georgian authorities detained the country’s former head of the State Security Service, accusing him of four corruption offences, including taking large bribes in exchange for protecting call centers that scammed victims around the world. Al Jazeera

Grigol Liluashvili, who ran the Republic of Georgia’s state security service from 2020 until April 2025, is facing allegations that he protected scam call centers that defrauded victims around the world. New Age If convicted, he faces between 11 and 15 years in prison.

In October, authorities raided the homes of a former prime minister, a former chief prosecutor, and Liluashvili, among others. His cousin, Sandro Liluashvili, was arrested on charges of fraud and money laundering. Al Jazeera

The question that enraged ordinary Georgians was simple and devastating. One protester asked directly: “If journalists were able to investigate and uncover this, how did the State Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs not know about it before? Protesters are harassed over a single social media post, their homes are raided, and everything is monitored. I do not believe that the State Security Service did not know about this.” Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha

Exposed, But Not Stopped

The investigators had done their job. But the story did not end with publication.

Despite a criminal investigation being launched after more than 30 media outlets reported on the scam operation, newly obtained telecom records showed that the scammers appeared to be back at work within weeks of being exposed. According to internal records obtained by Swedish digital forensic group Qurium, 14 of the call center’s agents were active on their VoIP provider, placing at least 184 outgoing calls just weeks after Scam Empire was published. Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha

A legal expert at the Tbilisi-based Institute for Development of Freedom of Information said scam call centers had been operating with impunity in Georgia for years because of a lack of political will to seriously investigate and root them out. Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha

The arrests and asset freezes that followed were a direct result of journalism. Without the leak, without the eight months of investigation, without the 32 reporters who refused to let this story die, 85 people would still be sitting in Tbilisi offices, stealing pension funds and mocking the people they robbed.

A Nation’s Shame, A World’s Wake-Up Call

For many Georgians, the investigation was almost too much to process. “When the Canadian man said they took my last penny, the first thing I felt was shame,” said one Georgian resident. “But I was very glad that in the end, you uncovered everything and found those people. You cleansed this stain from our country.” Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha

Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed the freezing of assets belonging to the call center’s owner and key figures behind the scheme, including properties, apartments, and real estate purchased under family members’ names. Dhaka Tribune

The investigation is ongoing. Germany has already convicted one of the operation’s senior figures. More trials are expected. More data is being analysed.

And somewhere out there, in another city, another country, another office building sitting beside another government headquarters, another group of young people is probably already dialling a new set of victims.

The Scam Empire has been exposed. The fight to dismantle it has only just begun.