In a nondescript office building tucked away in the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, a network of scammers-young, well-educated, and ruthless-spent their days impersonating financial advisers and manipulating thousands of people across the globe. Their victims believed they were investing in cryptocurrency or recovering stolen funds, when in fact they were being led deeper into a web of deception. This was not a one-off con but a highly organized, shockingly lucrative criminal enterprise built on cold-hearted lies and executed with chilling precision.

Known internally as “skameri,” these fraudsters operated out of a call center run by a company called A.K. Group. The firm presented itself as a legitimate telemarketing business, but an extraordinary leak of 1.1 terabytes of internal data has exposed the dark truth: the company brought in over $35 million from more than 6,000 victims between May 2022 and February 2025. Now, thanks to a joint investigation by OCCRP and its partners in Georgia-Studio Monitori, iFact, and GMC-the veil of anonymity that once shielded these scammers has been torn away.

One such victim, a 59-year-old factory worker from Alexandria, Canada, named Marcel, was drawn into the scam’s vortex over the course of several months. He was first approached by a woman calling herself “Veronika,” who claimed she represented an investment platform called “Golden Currencies.” Veronika encouraged him to invest small amounts, telling colleagues that he was eager and “motivated.” What she omitted was that Marcel had already been conned out of approximately 200,000 Canadian dollars and was desperate to recover his losses.

Enter “Mary Roberts,” the pseudonym of a 26-year-old Georgian scammer and star performer at A.K. Group. She claimed to work for “Blockchain” and assured Marcel that she had located his missing funds. At this point, Marcel was teetering on the edge of financial ruin-barely able to feed himself or his cat. But Mary didn’t care. She had a personal sales target of $80,000 for that month and she wasn’t going to miss it.

To win Marcel’s trust, Mary used a carefully curated identity. She described herself as a single mother with a daughter named Alice, or sometimes as a Polish migrant who had overcome hardship to become a crypto expert. She sent him a photo of a beautiful, olive-skinned woman with green eyes-an image lifted from a Ukrainian model’s Instagram. When Marcel finally realized he had been duped again and threatened to go to the police, Mary didn’t flinch. She laughed, ridiculed him, and boasted that even the “police of the entire world” wouldn’t be able to track her down.

But she was wrong.

Unlike old-school fraudsters operating in the shadows, the skameri flaunted their success online. Lavish vacations in Dubai, luxury handbags from Dior, and weddings with helicopters as a mode of arrival became the norm. Their ostentatious lifestyles, often posted on social media, would eventually help investigators unmask them.

By cross-referencing their online posts with internal chat logs, spreadsheets, and workplace performance reviews, journalists identified real names behind the fake personas. Even Mary’s real passport was found-ironically posted by her on Instagram.

What the investigation revealed was a call center operation with all the trappings of a modern tech company—open-concept offices, exposed brick walls, and brushed metal decor. Employees communicated via Telegram groups with names like “Back Office” and “AK-ers,” sharing memes, inside jokes, and gifs of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street to celebrate every successful “sale.”

But the dark heart of the business lay just beneath the surface. Employees were trained and evaluated based on their ability to lie, manipulate, and squeeze victims for as much money as possible. Poor performance wasn’t defined by failure to close deals-but by failure to be aggressive enough. Those who didn’t hound their targets were reprimanded by managers.

Mary Roberts was one of the operation’s top talents. Reserved in her work chats and rarely sharing personal details, she earned the admiration of her superiors for her efficiency and effectiveness. She worked on “Team Koen,” a group of elite scammers managed by a hard-nosed supervisor operating under the alias “Kseniya Koen.” Koen, or “KK,” as she was known internally, ran a tight ship. She chastised team leaders who failed to push their employees hard enough and was known for setting aggressive monthly sales targets.

Mary consistently topped performance charts. In the month she scammed Marcel, her individual target was set at a staggering $80,000. She responded to the challenge with a red heart emoji, signaling her readiness. In private messages with victims, Mary oozed charm and affection. She tailored her lies to match each target’s emotional vulnerabilities, leveraging pity and flirtation with equal skill.

But behind the charm lay a deeply cynical industry that openly acknowledged the damage it inflicted. Internal chats included jokes about arrests and self-aware comments about being caught. Yet none of it stopped the machine from grinding on.

The scam call center in Georgia is not an isolated case. It’s part of a sprawling network of similar operations spread across Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and beyond—many fueled by the same combination of disillusioned youth, weak regulatory oversight, and the lucrative appeal of online fraud. These operations exploit the internet’s anonymity, international jurisdictional challenges, and the desperation of economically struggling individuals who become either perpetrators or victims.

And while some call centers mask themselves under the pretense of marketing or sales firms, their internal communications betray their true nature. Performance incentives tied to fraud, training focused on emotional manipulation, and a hierarchy that rewards cruelty over compassion are not signs of a legitimate enterprise-they are red flags of a deeply corrupted system.

Despite uncovering names, documents, and damning evidence, bringing scammers to justice is still a monumental task. Cross-border cooperation is slow, and legal systems are often overwhelmed or ill-equipped to handle cyber fraud of this scale. The Georgian government has yet to make any major arrests or publicly address the OCCRP findings. Meanwhile, victims like Marcel are left to pick up the pieces, with little hope of ever recovering their lost money.

As the scale of the Tbilisi scam empire becomes clearer, it is no longer just a story of one call center or a few greedy individuals. It is a cautionary tale about what happens when technology, ambition, and moral detachment collide. It’s a reminder that behind every “Mary Roberts” is not just a fake passport, but a very real person playing god with someone else’s life savings.

Until real action is taken to dismantle these networks and hold perpetrators accountable, the skameri will keep popping champagne-and the rest of the world will keep paying the price.

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