From Kyiv, with fraud: Why Canada is a main target of investment scammers

There's a call centre in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv where employees have one job: to steal the life savings of Canadians through a variety of investment scams, according to a whistleblower who used to work in the industry.This building on Terasa Schevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv, Ukraine, houses one of hundreds of fraudulent call centres that have sprung up in Eastern Europe, run by a network of about two dozen criminal groups operating worldwide, says a whistleblower.

Alex wanted to speak to Canadian journalists because he says this country has quietly become a target of choice — largely because Canadian authorities haven't done much to stop these types of scams."I see that Canadians are target No. 1. I think it's because law enforcement has made no real prosecutions of the scammers," Alex told Radio-Canada from a secret location in Europe.

Once the victim makes a small initial deposit, they are shown results on a fake trading platform that lead them to believe they have achieved incredible profits.Over the course of days, weeks and sometimes months, the financial adviser manipulates the victim over the phone into "investing" ever larger amounts of money, steadily bleeding their life savings dry."The first quality is to win the trust of the victim. To be friends with the victim.

This screen grab of a Telegram chat shows what these call centres pay to ensnare Canadians in investment scams. When the journalist asked Leo whether rising inflation in Canada had curbed Canadians' interest in investment schemes, Leo laughed.Mark Solomons, a senior investigator at IFW Global, an Australian private investigative firm that specializes in fraud recovery, agrees that Canada is one of the main targets, alongside Australia.

This online ad featuring Elon Musk is another example of the fake endorsements used to make these investment scams appear legimate. Solomons said fighting this problem is not impossible. For example, Germany collaborated with authorities in Kosovo to arrest 18 people linked to fraudulent call centres in 2021, extraditing at least six of them.

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