Many victims who lost money to scammers say the gateway into the nightmare was a fake advertisement or article in which a trusted household name supposedly promoted an investment scheme. What they saw was a lie. Now, celebrities whose images and reputations are stolen to promote scams are calling for action.
After being exposed by journalists, scammers behind a multimillion-dollar call center fraud in Tbilisi delete their social media profiles, erasing evidence of their lavish lifestyles funded by thousands of victims worldwide.
The social media giant announcement came the same day OCCRP and dozens of media partners published an investigation into a massive international scam operation.
Two Chinese scammers convicted behind a high-profile Pacific Islands bribery scheme, Cary Yan and Gina Zhou, have been stranded at Manila’s international airport for nearly a week after both Palau and the Philippines denied them entry citing their criminal records and suspicious travel plans.
They called themselves “skameri.” In behind-the-scenes chats, they celebrated bilking victims out of their life savings and spent their earnings on lavish vacations, jewelry, and cars. They bragged that they would never be caught. But we tracked them down.
How many scam operations did reporters reveal? Who leaked the data? What’s the evidence these are scams and not legitimate platforms? Here are the answers to the most important questions about the ‘Scam Empire’ project.