The Billion Greenback Rip-off – BBC World Provider Documentaries

Let's just call him Mr. Red. It took us over a year to peel backthe layers of shell companies hidden offshore, to identifyfor the first time the big fish we believeare getting rich on misery. Losing $30,000 to a bunch of scammers. I was absolutely devastated by it. Hello. Hi. This is Jen. Who's this?.

My name is Simona Wineglass,and I'm an investigative reporter, and I think I'm about to be scammed. I'm pretending to be a schoolteachercalled Jen, and I've signed up to a numberof trading platforms to see how this scam works. Sounds fantastic. Software like thisnormally costs a fortune, but can I trust her? And where? Where are you calling from?.

Oh, your calling But you have such an interesting accent. Where did you, Where are you from originally? Okay. I know all about call center scams. I've been investigating themfor years Now, I'm posing as a teacher who wants to makesome extra income to help pay the bills. I'm pretending to be Canadian.

As the scammersdon't call Americans like me. Because, here in Washington, D.C., a team of prosecutorssuccessfully brought down one such scam sending the womanrunning it to prison for 22 years. How big was the problem at the timewhen you started investigating? Like, why did you even take it on? Just in the handful of organizationsthat we were focusing on initially, there were tens of thousands of victimsacross the world and there was onevictim who had reported losing $400,000.

A lot of these people were like just like,you know, any of the rest of us. They're no smarter,no dumber, professionals Quite a few people who workedfor the government and had long careers in the government, who ended upbeing defrauded by scams like this. Three years ago, I was partof an international investigation with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter For the first time, we revealedthe existence of a criminal group called Milton. Now, I want to expose asenior man really behind it.

Back then, we discovered Milton's front linewere scam call centers, where hundreds of young people in EasternEurope are recruited with promises of big moneyand a little luxury For each new victims They receive a bonus and a hefty percentage of the money< they persuade them to invest. Then the investigation had an undercovermole employed in a Milton call center in Kiev, Ukraine. When the investigation came out, he went into witness protection. We tracked him downto see if he could help us go further and identifythe masterminds behind the scams. We have to protect Alex's identity. We've changed his name and voice. He's paid a heavy pricefor going up against the criminals in the Milton group and now has to live in a secret locationaway from friends and family.

Despite the risks, he's determined the criminalssee justice. I hope that with his inside knowledge,we'll be able to piece together the cluesto reveal how the criminals work. During those months when you wereundercover, were you ever scared? Yes, I was terrified of getting caught. It was very stressful psychologically. I decided to stay therejust to discover for public about this crime and to help policeget the evidence. So even though there was a huge exposéinvolving.

Dozens of newspapers around the world,Milton group is still operating. Yes, they are still operating. And they started to make big money. As a student in Russia, Alex was trained in cryptography. He's now using those skillsto follow the money. In your estimation How much money has the Milton group madesince it started? About 1 billion.

About 1 billion dollars. Since 2017. You're saying 100% of people lost money, meaning they lostat least some of their money? Yes. Not a single cent went into a real trade. What happened to the moneyonce people deposited in their account? Victims think that they havea real account with the company, but there is not really any trading,just a simulation.

Fraud is larger than it's ever been. Last year, victims reported losing £4 billion in the United Kingdom. Most people never come forward. Oh, here we go. Hi, this is Jen. Oh, I'm so glad we're finally speaking. With Alex's help, I'mnow talking to the Milton scammers. Patrick works for one of their brands,Coinevo.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to see what sort of promises theymake to persuade me to invest. How much money do you thinkI can make in a month doing this? These kind of returns are impossible to promise. To show how this scam works, I deposit $500 in Bitcoin and agreeon another time to talk to Patrick. The Milton grouphas thousands of victims. Many lose much more than the BBCis allowing me to put in.

I'm just going to transfer the moneyto you. Okay, one second. I'm on my way to meet Londoner Barry Burnett,who started making £10 trades after signing up with a prominent Miltonbrand, EverFX When he saw how well his portfolioappeared to be doing, he invested more. He told us he let his trading advisor take control of his computerand trade for him. This should never happen.

Then he started losing money. And this is when the Milton fraudstersasked him to invest even more. Put some more money in. Double up. If you put £25,000 in, then you canwipe out your losses and make a profit. And I said, no, I'm not doing that, absolutely not I just want to just bring my losses downto a manageable amount and I want to get out. And I must have got at leasthalf a dozen calls from half a dozen individualsin the space of about 2 hours.

My phone just kept on blowing up, begging me basically to put more money in. Barry says he lost over £10,000. His experience fits a pattern. What if I told youthat we've spoken to insiders at the companyand they told us it was all a scam? I am horrified. I'm numb. I can't believe this, because I was neverreally going to get that back.

So I could almost think that the momentI put that ten grand in their account, that was it. It was just gone. You know, it's disgusting on every level. You know, it's just, it just makes me sickto think about it, to be honest. I could just imagine the misery that they've inflicted onother people's lives. So how did these companies pull it off? How do they getso many people to trust them? The brand Barry used, EverFX, became established through a high profile.

Sponsorship deal with one of Europe'sbiggest football clubs, Sevilla FC. It's match day. Two of Spain's biggest clubs are playingtheir local derby. Over two years, the Milton groupspent an estimated €7 million with Seville FC to promote their brand EverFX, including glossy promo videos like this. Seville even use some of their biggest players to unwittingly sell Melton's brand.

I didn't know much about trading,but EverFX told me everything I needed to know. Forex and footballare both unpredictable industries, but these guys have all the necessary materialto help out new traders like myself. So thank you, EverFX. EverFX: Main global sponsor of Seville football club Their sponsorship deal finished soon after the UK's Financial ConductAuthority banned EverFX. But not before they had ripped off 17,000.

Investors in Spain alone. Lots of the club's fansknow people who have lost money on these scams. Hey, Mark I'm good. I'm in Seville. On a side street, I went to talk to someonewho also investigates these scams. Mark Solomonsworks for an Australian investigation.

Firm that tries to get money backfor victims. The thing with Milton groupis that they tend to sort of they'll hit people upfor a certain amount and then they move onand they kind of like to work in bulk. I mean the EverFX logo, it's hard to imagine that most ofthe fans haven't been exposed to it. It must be because it's giving them accessto a particular demographic that's maybe prone to gambling. The brand awareness that these dealsgenerate.

Is essentialin making these scams appear reputable. We found that 40% of the Englishpremiership signed sponsorship deals with suspectedscam brands outside the Milton group. This includes Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester City, Southampton and Tottenham. They were all either investigated by regulators, finedby regulators, investigated by police, or banned by the Financial ConductAuthority, including FXVC.

Who sponsored Leeds United until 2021, when they were bannedby the Financial Conduct Authority. While Leeds made promos like this. FXVC scammed hundreds of thousands of pounds while using its sponsorshipto look legitimate. The idea that we've been manipulated by A company like thatwould really make me sick to my stomach I'm quite upset, because it was quite heavilyadvertised as well, and it was also you could do it off the website as well.

So not very happy to be honest. Yeah. After seeing that FXVC sponsoredLeeds United Phil and Joyce invested £1,000 with them. The call center soon got to work. His words to me were, “Oh, I will take care of youas though you were my own mother” One of the main things he was saying, “Phil, you do realizeyou're going to be a millionaire”.

Despite the extraordinary promises,the couple say they believed FXVC was a reputable trading platform. Why would they allow that sort of company to support Leeds United, a premiershipfootball club? Why? It just doesn't make sense to me. So I took it at face valuethat they were a good, reputable company. Phil invested more. Betting £100,000 that the price of Bitcoinwould go up and his accountshowed an £85,000 profit in a weekend.

So they put in more and more. He said all along that you canhave your money out, there's no problem. Have your money out whenever you want. But when they started losing money,their account manager told them their balance had fallen belowa threshold. So to get their remaining money out,they would have to put more in. So they did, and then lost it all. We had lost £341,000 within seven days.

They don't care who they hurt,they don't care who they take money off. They don't care. I knewhe was really deeply distraught over it and I knew he would be humiliatedand ashamed. He literally hung on to me that day, just apologizing and saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was stupid, I was stupid. At Leeds United,they've got a duty of care to make sure the people that are associatedwith are legitimate.

Companies, and not doingthese sort of scams. Leeds United told us”as soon as we were made aware that FXVC had lost their license,the agreement was terminated.” FXVC, denied any wrongdoing and told us they fully compliedwith the ruling by the FCA. The Premier League clubs that responded said deals were endedearly, were not renewed, or that allegationsagainst the potential scam companies only cameafter the sponsorship deals had ended.

And Seville FC told us that once the contract ended there was no more contactwith EverFX While these shiny videos may be history,no one to date from EverFX or FXVC has been prosecuted for these scams. One of the reasons is that criminalinvestigations are highly complex, expensive, and the scammersseem to always be one step ahead. In Britain, none of the victimswe've spoken to have had their cases pursued by the police.

Oliver Bullough was a reporter in the former Soviet Union, but now writes about moneylaundering and the offshore worlds. Am I surprised to hear that the British police have donenothing about these reports? No. That is wearily familiar. If you're famous,They'll take an interest. But if it's just, you know, Mr. or Mrs. Smith have lost their retirementsavings 40 grand, 50 grand, 60 grand. They send in a reportand nothing will happen. Oliver believes that the scammers hidebehind a complex series.

Of offshore companiesto protect their true identity. If you are coming at itas an investigative journalist or more likely as a law enforcement agent,you have to go to every one of those jurisdictions,write them a letter, formal process, and then receive informationabout the ownership of that company. That may take you six months.It may take you a year. It may not be possible at all. So the point of the complexityis to make things incomprehensible and essentially to try and forceother people just to give up.

I'm not about to give up, but I do need some help. In a sleepy town in Germany, I've heard the fight back against Milton is underway. It's an unlikely hub for the high techfight against the scammers. The cybercrime unithere, in contrast to the UK, is making arrestsacross Europe and beyond. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you Using digital techniques,the team can follow the crime.

To the dark portalsof the deepest parts of the internet and chase down those perpetrating it. It's directed by public prosecutors,methodically gathering evidence and forensically tracingthe huge sums of money it generates. They are operating like professional legal companies, and that's what we say. This is organized crime. And how much money are some of theselarger organized crime groups bringing in? Probably hundreds of millions per year.

Investigating financial scams like these means following the money. So let's say we have onevictim of whatever platform and we know he transferred his money to this bank accountof whatever company here in Germany. And then we have all the transactionsof the company, of the bank account. And we see there are so many other victimsfrom Germany and Austria and Great Britain and France who all sendtheir money on this bank account. But those cases are still unreported. And our biggest problemis that we only see the reported cases.

Their investigation is making headway. Last year, they seized these assetsfrom another criminal group who also operated investment scams. But the methodical gathering of evidencetakes years. In the very beginning,we weren't sure at all whether we will identify any suspectsand that there will be any arrest ever. But after three years, we seethere are dozens of arrests and we were able to identifyreally huge networks of scammers. I wanted to know if the prosecutors were aware ofwho was behind the Milton group.

So I had to ask. Who were the big bosses of the Milton group? No comment. No comment. Good evening. Hi. Yes, you are. You're speaking with Jen. I've been passed up the chainto a retention manager. It's the same job that Alex had whileworking in the call center in Ukraine.

Then, he sold a few different brands, but he has since discovered many more that follow the same pattern. He unearthed scores of different brands, but they all had identical sign up pages. Exactly the same wording in their terms and conditions,and exactly the same log in pages. Alex has then discovered that they all sharethe same unique code in their design and the same online deposit pagewhere clients can choose.

To invest with dollars, poundsor cryptocurrencies EverFX has the same sign in pageand the same code and the same script in the samestructure as all these other websites. Yeah. So you're 100%sure it's a Milton group website? Yes, I'm hundred percent sure. Okay, let's look athow many brands are there total? 152. Wow. It's a huge brand network, but are there any other connections?.

We decided to follow the money. Like me, a lot of people now hand over Bitcoin and Bitcoin is on a public ledger,which means you can follow where it goes. So it should be simple, but it's not. Because there are thousands and thousandsof crypto wallets that channel the money. When I started this journey,I put my money into the brand Coinevo. Victims have been doing thisfor years, putting money into other brands, including EverFX, the brand that scammed Barry The money that moves througha complex system of wallets.

But ultimately ends upin just a few dozen. We suspect, owned by the peoplebehind the scam. We don't know for surewho owns these wallets. But mapping this network is usefulbecause it shows these brands are linked We saw my Coinevo money joining a moneyroute from EverFX here before continuingthrough to the rest of the network. So this is a trade that I opened and I'm not like doing so well. I'm kind of like in the red.

I've been trying to contact Coinevobut have heard nothing back. Perhaps they know who I really am or are only interested in peoplewho've invested more. Antoine still doesn't get back to me. So I decide to cut my lossesand withdraw my money. Then I get this email. Hi, Jenny. The passport you've sent us is a fake. I assume you know this.

So go yourself pretty, please. With sugar on top. Despite chasing, I never got back the money that was still in the account. So how can we find outwho's behind these crimes? When Alex, the undercovermole, worked for Milton, he recorded their 2020 New Year's Eve partywith a secret camera in his watch. Are there clues here about who the Milton group masterminds are? The audio reveals a man called David,.

Who was crowned the father of Milton. When I worked on the first investigation,we identified this David as Georgian National David Todua. To simplifythe complex connections in this network. We're going to give him a nickname, Mr. Orange. These are photos from his nowdeleted Instagram feed. Showing him at the party with other seniorfigures of the Milton group and him posing with guns. So where does Mr. Orange fit into the wider Milton organization? Two years after the party,he has an office in a new call center.

In Kiev selling EverFX and other Milton brands. Ukraine is clearly important for their whole operation. But they, like everyone else,were about to get a shock. Ukraine was invaded and Alex, keeping an eye on scammersfrom his hiding place, was seeing evidence onlinethat call center staff were fleeing the war. One place he's seen job adverts is in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. I've come to the capital, Tbilisi, to meetlocal investigative reporter Nino Bakradze.

Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? So, Nino, we've come to Georgiabecause we think that this has become one of the hubsof the companies behind the call centers. Are you sureit's a like a current information? We have an insider who thinks that they're getting people in Ukraineto relocate to Georgia. A few months ago, there was a big scandalrelated to the call centers.

And the prosecutor officeshut down several offices. But since then,we know that the area is clean and this call centersmoved away from the country. There was an investigative storyyou can see there. I know who that is. This one? Yes, I know who this guy is. His name is Michel Benimini. I've investigated him before.

Benimini was charged in Israelwith tax evasion, but never showed up for his trial. I think that we need to investigatefor ourselves. Our own research shows that Michel Benimini, let's call him Mr. Red, registered an early Miltonbrand, Cap MP. So this suggests that he's been involvedfor a long time. I'm curious, but it doesn't take Nino long to come back with more. She's found evidence of a call centerand it's active. You were right.

It's called M.G. Capital. M.G. Capital, the company foundedby Yousef Mgleazde four years ago. I found his ID scan and his emailaddress in the business registry. And I have a contract of rental agreementwhich is signed by Yousef Mgleazde And he signs a rental agreement in 2019. We identified Yousef Mgleazde'sprofile on Facebook Then we found out the people on the photos. So we found out a personwho worked at a call center and we persuaded her to talk to you.

We met the young woman who'd worked at M.G. Capital in central Tbilisi. She doesn't want to talk on camera,so we're not showing her face, and have changed her voice. Ivana was told to choose a fake English sounding name and never reveal that she was calling from Georgia. She was selling a Milton brand. But who is Joseph Mgeladze, our Mr Green? Can his other business links tell us anything about this network? We already know that he foundedand used to own MG Capital,.

Which seems to have sold Milton brands. But Mr. Green also founded this company. Its directors have includedtwo men who seem connected to the network. This guy, Mr. Blue, owned a company called Nash Pay, which has provided tech to the Milton Group brands, a company that he sold to Mr. Orange, the gun-loving David Todua And together with Mr. Pink. Mr. Blue is senior in EverFX, as well as other crucial Miltontech companies. And finally, some of these key companies.

Operated from the same buildingthat housed Mr. Orange's new office in Kiev. This is all looking very cozy. The offshore world is opaque, withsome people spending a fortune deliberately muddyingthe waters of their operations. But they can't be sure that the pastwill stay buried forever. As the world wakes up to the revelations in the Panama Papers… Back in 2016., millions of documents that were meantto be confidential were leaked. They revealed the true ownersand inner workings.

Of directors of hundreds of offshore companies. They were called the Panama Papers. So let's go back in timeand see what the leak can tell us about our people of interest. Four of them are there. They have a history togetherand appear to be running a network of non-Milton companies across the globe. But many of these companieshave something in common. They're linked to an office block in Tbilisi called the Pixel Building.

The paper trail ends here, throughout all of our Panama Papers investigations, we've analyzed thousands of offshoredocuments. And one person appears to have founded or registeredmany of these early non-Milton companies. Mr David Kezerashvili But who is this Mr Kezerashvili? He's a former Georgian politician. He was defense minister during the waragainst the Russians in 2008. When he left office, he startedhis business career.

Based in London, he can't return to Georgiaas he was found guilty of corruption in what he claimsis a politically motivated case. Accepting this, the British courtsrefused to extradite him. In Georgia, he's remembered by some as Mr. Offshore and the leak non-Milton Company data shows he sat at the center of thisnetwork of offshore companies. Our men were given senior positions in these companies which Mr Kezerashvili registered all over the world. Multiple roads seem to lead to him.

We've been invited back here by Europol,who have zeroed in on some of the same people as us, and nowwe're joining them on call center raids. Simultaneous actions are taking place in Ukraine, Albania and North Macedonia. We have no idea where we're going. We were told to follow the carin front of us. The last time they did a raidlike this, the bosses of the call center were tipped off. So everything depends on secrecy. We've driven into this parking garageand the German and Georgian police.

Are coordinating their actions. The prosecutors have just walked in. But they told us that the placehas already been secured. Would you like to speak to usabout what happened here? don't understand. You don't understand anything I'm saying. Even though you just responded to mein perfect English. Did you know that this was allegedlya scam? I'm not wishing you to take this video right now,and I'm not responding on your questions.

What was the brandthat you were selling here? We are quite happy with the situationright now as far as we can examine all the materialsand the people that we see some evidence is clear evidenceas far as German desk, as far as the German market is targeted. And obviously we see quite good hints to such activity here. Right now,there are 30 raids across Georgia in the center of Tbilisi they'rehitting a company we already know:.

M.G Capital. These screens are really interesting. Here you have the back office of a brand called Eco Sales and you have the names of people that they were callingto get money from them. And here you have four British names here. So you can see thatthis is just a call center that was allegedly scammingpeople all over the world. And let's see if we can see how much money.

They got from various people Looking through our footage afterwardsI found a note “no liabilities, wants to buy a property,not discussing number but has savings savings less than 10K, very p**** should scamc soon For the German prosecutors, this has been four years in the planningand now they've time to reflect. We know that, of course, for example,the FCA in Great Britain say scams are the biggest threatfor private investors.

But on the other hand,we see due to our actions and our investigations in the last years, that there are also some positive effects, that the perpetrators are more carefuland at least do not target the German market as much as they didmaybe two or three years ago. The overall damage is stillin the hundreds of millions. Probably we can talk about billionsnot only in Germany, but all over the world. We noticed a lot of British victims.

On the computer screensin the call center. If you ended your investigationwhere would that leave them? We have to be realistic. We can't save the world. It's already pretty hard work to save the German market. There should be some kind of lawenforcement in Great Britain, as far as I know. So that's their main responsibility. And to see it from a from a legalperspective, it's not in our jurisdiction.

The raids led the news in Georgia. Mgladze, our Mr. Green He gave a press conferenceafter one of the scam brands was raided in an office he owns. He says that his company rents out spaces and the offices to other companies,but he doesn't know what's. A company who rent shelf is really does. So he's saying that he was justrenting space to another call center but he owns M.G Capital.

Yes we know that he founded M.G Capital and also he mentions that he was a partner, a business partnerof David Kezerashvili So we know that the links between these men go way back. Thanks to the Panama Papers leak. Then the pattern was that Kezerashviliwas the link between our men. But if the real links were confidentialbefore, might they be confidential again? So fast forward to the present. The men all seem to have been key figuresin the Milton group running or owning tech companies and.

Or the scam brand EverFX But does Kezerashvili fit in now? Well, he's not really on the paperwork. This is what we can see. He's connected to this company,which used to own EverFX. Through his venturecapital firm He owned the branding and website,for this tech company, which built the trading platformand website of EverFX The email servers for his personalcompanies were held on the same.

Private servers as those for EverFX,Axios and Newage. He owns a building in Kievwhere the original call center was moved to in 2020 and where they sold EverFX And where Mr. Orange had an officewhere many of these companies were housed, and which was raidedin the Europol action in Ukraine. And this gives us a hint of Kezerashvili's Social Circle. At a wedding in 2018, he was pictured with Mr. Orange and Mr. Red as well as other key Milton figures. He also has interestingsocial media connections.

Kezerashvili regularly likes and sharesFacebook and LinkedIn posts from several tech groups as well as fromEverFX and its successor Axios. And his Facebook friends have included at least 45 other people linked tosome of these companies. And of course, He's also Facebook friends with Mr. Pink, Mr. Blue, Mr. Green and Mr. Orange. And Mr. Red? Well, that's his cousin We went to. Mr. Kezerashvili's £80 million house in London.

To see if he could answer these questionsabout his role. Hi, I'm a journalist. I'd like to speak with DavidKezerashvili Is he available? No. He's not available? Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, bye bye. He wouldn't talk to usbut his lawyers made clear.

That Mr. Kezerashvili strongly deniesany involvement with Milton, or that he gained financially from scams. He says that EverFX was to his knowledge,a legitimate business and that connections we have found to the peopleand IT behind it, prove nothing. Mr. Chelidze and Mr Gogeshvili strongly deny our allegations saying that EverFX is a legitimate,regulated platform. They deny knowledge of Miltonor any connection between EverFX and the brands. we identified. Who they suggest have misused its source code and brand.

To confuse users. They say EverFX has never had a crypto wallet and has no control over how its third party payment processors direct funds. Mr. Mgeladze said: “I completely deny these allegations. I am not involved in any way with Milton. I have never owned call centers or any other businessesengaged in mis-selling financial products”. Neither Mr Benimini nor Mr Todua responded to our questions EverFX denied our allegations,saying that they are a legitimate.

And regulated platformwhere risks are fully explained. They investigated Barry's case and foundhe was responsible for his losses. In our anonymous case, they told us herlosses were as a result of her moving to an unconnected companyand that they fully cooperated with the FCA. But Alex and I are not about to give up.

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