they've had a good year. they've taken hundreds of millions from victims, and now and now they're celebrating. the scammers make so much they can afford expensive sponsorship deals to make their brands look reputable. the fact that they sponsored leeds football club, i just took them as being a proper investment platform. they just want to take your money off you. there were tens of thousands of victims across the world. a lot of these people were just like the rest of us. they're no smarter, no dumber. there was never any chance for all those customers. - it's all a lie. i go undercover to find out how they convince people to invest. how are you, darling? how is everything going? we team up with a man who's been on the inside. my life changed radically.

i have to hide now and think about security. wejoin europol raids on call centres selling the scam. you don't understand anything i'm saying. even though you just responded to me in perfect english. did you know that this was a scam? no. and we travel to the former soviet states where it all began. hi, simona. i know who this guy is. let's just call him mr red. it took us over a year to peel back the layers of shell companies hidden offshore to identify for the first time the big fish we believe are getting rich on misery. losing $30,000 to a bunch of scammers. i was absolutely devastated by it.

hello? hi. this isjen. who's this? my name is simona weinglass, and i'm an investigative reporter, and i think i'm about to be scammed. i'm pretending to be a schoolteacher called jen, and i've signed up to a number of trading platforms to see how this scam works. sounds fantastic. software like this normally costs a fortune, but can i trust her? where are you calling from?

but you have such an interesting accent. where are you from originally? 0k. i know all about call centre scams. i've been investigating them for years. now i'm posing as a teacher who wants to make some extra income to help pay the bills. i'm pretending to be canadian as the scammers don't call americans like me. because here in washington, dc, a team of prosecutors successfully brought down one such scam, sending the woman running it to prison for 22 years.

how big was the problem at the time when you started investigating? why did you even take it on? just in the handful of organisations that we were focusing on initially, there were tens of thousands of victims across the world. i mean, there was one victim who had reported losing $400,000. a lot of these people were likejust like, you know, any of the rest of us. they're no smarter, no dumber, professionals. quite a few people who worked for the government and had long careers in the government who ended up being defrauded by scams like this. three years ago, i was part of an international investigation with the swedish newspaper dagens nyheter. for the first time, we revealed the existence of a criminal group called milton. now i want to expose the senior men really behind it. back then, we discovered milton's front line were scam call centres, where hundreds of young people

in eastern europe are recruited with promises of big money and a little luxury. for each new victim, they receive a bonus and a hefty percentage of the money they persuade them to invest. then the investigation had an undercover mole employed in a milton call centre in kyiv, ukraine. when the investigation came out, he went into witness protection. we tracked him down to see if he could help us go further and identify the masterminds behind the scams. we have to protect alex's identity. we've changed his name and voice. he's paid a heavy price for going up against the criminals in the milton

group and now has to live in a secret location away from friends and family. despite the risks, he's determined the criminals see justice. i hope that, with his inside knowledge, we'll be able to piece together the clues to reveal how the criminals work. during those months when you were undercover, were you ever scared? yes, i was terrified of getting caught. it was very stressful psychologically. i decided to stay there just to discover for public about this crime and to help police get evidence. so even though there was a huge expose involving dozens of newspapers around the world, milton group is still operating? yes, they still operating. and they started to make big money.

as a student in russia, alex was trained in cryptography. he's now using those skills to follow the money. in your estimation, how much money has the milton group made since it started? about one billion. about $1 billion? since 2017. you're saying 100% of people lost money, meaning they lost at least some of their money? yes. not a single cent went into a real trade. what happened to the money once people deposited it in their account? victims think that they have a 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.

0h, here we go. hi. this isjen. oh, i'm so glad we're finally speaking. with alex's help, i'm now talking to the milton scammers. patrick works for one of their brands. thank you. i want to see what sort of promises they make to persuade me to invest. how much money do you think i can make in a month doing this? these kind of returns

are impossible to promise. to show how the scam works, i deposit $500 in bitcoin and agree on another time to talk to patrick. the milton group has thousands of victims. many lose much more than the bbc is allowing me to put in. i'm just going to transfer the money to you. 0k, one second. i'm on my way to meet londoner barry burnett, who started making £10 trades after signing up with a prominent milton brand. when he saw how well his portfolio appeared to be doing, he invested more. he told us he let his trading adviser take control of his computer and trade for him. this should never happen. then he started losing money and this is when the milton fraudsters asked him to invest even more. put some more money in. yeah, and double up.

if you put £25,000 in, then you can wipe 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 down to a manageable amount and i want to get out. and i must have got at least half a dozen calls from half a dozen individuals in the space of about two hours. my phone just kept on blowing up, begging me basically to put some more money in. barry says he lost over £10,000. his experience fits a pattern. what if i told you that we've spoken to insiders at the company and they told us it was all a scam? i am horrified. i'm numb. i can't believe this because i was never really going to get that back. so i could almost think that the moment i put that ten grand in their account, that was it. it wasjust gone. you know, it's disgusting on every level, you know, itjust makes me sick

to think about it. i could just imagine the misery they've inflicted on other people's lives. so how do these companies pull it off? how do they get so many people to trust them? the brand barry used became established through a high—profile sponsorship deal with one of europe's biggest football clubs, sevilla fc. it's match day. two of spain's biggest clubs are playing their local derby. over two years, the milton group spent an estimated seven euros million with sevilla fc to promote their brands, including glossy promo videos like this. sevilla even used some of their biggest players to unwittingly sell milton's brands.

i didn't know much about trading, but it taught me everything i needed to know. forex and football are both unpredictable industries, but these guys have all the necessary material to help out new traders like myself. so thank you. their sponsorship deal finished soon after the uk's financial conduct authority banned it, but not before they had ripped off 17,000 investors in spain alone. lots of the club's fans know 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 someone who also investigates these scams. mark solomons works for an australian investigations firm that tries to get money back for victims. the thing with milton group is that they tend to sort of, they'll hit people up for a certain amount and then they move on and they kind of like to work in bulk. i mean the everfx logo, it's hard to imagine that most of the fans haven't been exposed to it. it must be because it's giving them access to a particular demographic that's maybe prone to gambling. the brand awareness that these deals generate is essential in making these scams appear reputable. we found that 40% of the english premiership signed sponsorship deals with suspected scam brands outside the milton group. this includes chelsea, everton, fulham, leeds, liverpool, manchester city, southampton and tottenham. they were all either

investigated by regulators, fined by regulators, investigated by police or banned by the financial conduct authority, including fxvc, who sponsored leeds united until 2021, when they were banned by the financial conduct authority. while leeds made promos like this, fxvc scammed hundreds of thousands of pounds while using its sponsorship to look legitimate. the idea that we've been manipulated by a company like that would really make me sick to my stomach. quite upset because it was quite heavily advertised as well. you can do it off the website as well. so not very happy. yeah. after seeing that fx vc sponsored leeds united,

phil and joyce invested £1,000 with them. the call centre soon got to work. his words to me were, "i will take care of you as though you were my own mother." one of the main things he was saying, "phil, you do realise you'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 premiership football club? why? itjust doesn't make sense to me. so i took it at face value that they were a good, reputable company. phil invested more, betting £100,000 that the price of bitcoin would go up and his account showed an £85,000 profit in a weekend. so they put in more and more. he said all along that you can have your money, 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 below a 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 knew he was really deeply distraught over it and i knew he would be humiliated and ashamed. he literally hung on to me that day, just apologising and saying, "i'm sorry, i'm sorry. i was stupid." leeds united have got a duty of care to make sure the people that they are associated with are legitimate companies and not doing these sort of scams. leeds united told us...

the premier league clubs that responded said deals were ended early, were not renewed, or that allegations against the potential scam companies only came after the sponsorship deals had ended. and seville fc told us that once the contract ended there was no more contact with the company. while these shiny videos may be history, no one to date from the companies has been prosecuted for these scams. one of the reasons is that criminal investigations are highly complex, expensive, and the scammers seem to always be one step ahead. in britain, none of the victims we've spoken to have had their cases pursued by the police. 0liver was a reporter in the former soviet union but now writes

about money laundering and the offshore world. am i surprised to hear that the british police have done nothing 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 and mrs smith have lost their retirement savings, a0 grand, 50 grand, 60 grand, send in a report and nothing will happen. 0liver believes that the scammers hide behind a complex series of offshore companies to protect their true identity. if you are coming at it as 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, a formal process, and then receive information about 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 complexity is to make things incomprehensible and essentially to try and force

other 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 under way. it's an unlikely hub for the high tech fight against the scammers. the cyber crime unit here, in contrast to the uk, is making arrests across europe and beyond. nice to meet you. welcome. using digital techniques, the team can follow the crime through the dark portals of the deepest parts of the internet and chase down those perpetrating it. it's directed by public prosecutors, methodically gathering evidence and forensically tracing the huge sums of money it generates.

i wanted to know if the prosecutors were aware of who was behind the milton group. so i had to ask. who are the big bosses of the milton group? no comment. good evening. hi. yes, you are. you're speaking with jen.

i've been passed up the chain to a retention manager. it's the same job that alex had while working in the call centre 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 login pages. alex has then discovered that they all share the same unique code in their design, and the same online deposit page where clients can choose to invest with dollars, pounds or cryptocurrencies. they has the same sign in page and the same code and the same script and the same structure as all these other websites. so you're100% sure it's a milton group website? yes, i'm100% sure. ok, let's look at how 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 thousands of crypto wallets that channel the money. when i started thisjourney, i put my money into the brand coinevo. victims have been doing this for years, putting money into other brands, including the brand that scammed barry. the money that moves through a complex system of wallets but ultimately ends up in just a few dozen, we suspect, owned by the people behind the scam.

we don't know for sure who owns these wallets, but mapping this network is useful because it shows these brands are linked. we saw my coinevo moneyjoining a money route here before continuing through 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 coin evo but have heard nothing back. perhaps they know who i really am or only interested in people who've invested more. antoine still doesn't get back to me, so i decide to cut my losses and 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 bleep yourself". "pretty pleased with sugar on top". despite chasing, i never got back the money that was still in the account. so how can we find out who's behind these crimes? when alex, the undercover mole, worked for milton, he recorded their 2020 new year's eve party with 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 simplify the complex connections in this network we're going to give him a nickname, mr 0range. these are photos from his now deleted instagram feed showing him at the party with other senior figures of the milton group and him posing with guns. so where does mr 0range fit into the wider milton organisation? two years after the party, he has an office in a new call centre in kyiv selling milton brands. ukraine is clearly important for their whole operation, but they like everyone else, we're about to get a shock. were about to get a shock. ukraine was invaded, and alex, keeping an eye on scammers from his hiding place, was seeing evidence online that call centre staff were fleeing the war.

0ne place he's seenjob adverts is in the former soviet republic of georgia. i've come to the capital tbilisi to meet a local investigative reporter, nino bakradze. nino? hi. how are you? good. how are you? so, nino, we've come to georgia because we think that this has become one of the hubs of the companies behind the call centres. are you sure? it's like a current information. we have an insider who thinks that they're getting people in ukraine to relocate to georgia. a few months ago, there was a big scandal related to the call centres and the prosecutor's office shut down several offices. but since then, we know that the area is clean and the call centres moved away from the country.

there was an investigative story. you can see that. i know who that is. this one? yes, i know who this guy is. his name is michael benjamin. i've investigated him before. he was charged in israel with tax evasion, but never showed up for his trial. i think that we need to investigate for ourselves. our own research shows that this man, let's call him mr red registered an early milton brand, so this suggests that he's been involved for 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 centre and its active.

it's called img capital. img capital, the company founded by some four years ago. ifound his id scan and his email address in the business registry. and i have a contract of rental agreement, which is signed, by abigail adams. and he signed a rental agreement in 2019. we identified his profile on facebook. then we found out the people on the photos. so we found out a person who worked at a call centre and we persuaded her to talk to you. we met the young woman who'd worked at mg 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 isjospeph megaladze, our mr green? can his other business links tell us anything about this network? we already know that he founded and used to own mg capital, which seems to have sold milton brands. but mr green also founded this company. its directors have included two men who seem connected to the network. this guy, mr blue, owned a company

which has provided tech to the milton group brands, a company that he sold to mr 0range, the gun loving david todua, and together with mr pink, mr blue is senior, as well as other crucial milton tech companies. and finally, some of these key companies operated from the same building that housed mr 0range�*s new office in kyiv. this is all looking very cosy. the offshore world is opaque, with some people spending a fortune deliberately muddying the waters of their operations. but they can't be sure that the past will stay buried forever. as the world wakes up to have the revelations and the panama papers, we'll ask why. back in 2016, millions of documents that were meant to be confidential were leaked. they revealed the true owners and inner workings of directors

of hundreds of offshore companies. they were called the panama papers. so let's go back in time and see what the leak can tell us about our people of interest. four of them are there. they have a history together and appear to be running a network of non—milton companies across the globe. but many of these companies have 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 analysed thousands of offshore documents. and one person appears to have founded or registered many of these early non—milton companies. mr david kezerashvili. but who is this kezerashvili?

he's a former georgian politician. he was defence minister during the war against the russians in 2008. when he left office, he started his business career. based in london, he can't return to georgia as he was found guilty of corruption in what he claims is a politically motivated case. accepting this, the british courts refused to extradite him. in georgia, he's remembered by some as mr offshore and the leaked non—milton company data shows he sat at the centre of this network of offshore companies. 0ur 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 now we're joining them

on call centre 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 car in front of us. the last time they did a raid like this, the bosses of the call centre were tipped off. so everything depends on secrecy. we've driven into this parking garage and the german and georgian police are coordinating their actions. the prosecutors havejust walked in, but they told us that the place has already been secured. would you like to speak to us? about what happened here? i can't understand it. you don't understand anything i'm saying, even though you just responded to me in perfect english?

did you know that this was allegedly a scam? i'm not wishing you to take this video, right now and i'm not responding on your questions. what was the brand that you were selling here? we are quite happy with the situation right now as far as we can examine all the materials and the people we see, some evidence is clear. evidence as far as the german market is targeted, and obviously we see quite good hints to such an activity here. right now, there are 30 raids across georgia.

in the centre of tbilisi they're, hitting a company we already know, mg capital. these screens are really interesting. here you have a back office of a brand called eco sales, and you have the names of people that they were calling to get money from them. and here you have four british names here. so you can see that this is just a call centre that was allegedly scamming people all over the world. and let's see if we can see how much money they got from various people. looking through our footage afterwards, ifound a note. "no liabilities wants to buy a property, not discussing number, but has savings." savings less than 10k, very expletive. "should scam soon". for the german prosecutors, this has been four years in the planning and now they've time to reflect. we know that, of course, for example, the fca

in great britain say scams are the biggest threat for 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 careful and at least do not target the german market as much as they did maybe two or three years ago. the overall damage is still in the hundreds of millions. probably we can talk about billions, not only in germany but all over the world. we noticed a lot of british victims on the computer screens in the call centre. if you ended your investigation, where 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 law enforcement in great britain, as far as i know. so that's their main responsibility. and to see it from a legal perspective, it's not

in ourjurisdiction. the raids led the news in georgia. 0ur mr green gave a press conference after one of the scam brands was raided in an office he owns. he says that his company rents out spaces and offices to other companies, but he doesn't know what a company who rents the office really does. so he's saying that he was just renting space to another call centre, but he owns mg capital? yes, we know that he founded mg capital. and also he mentions that he was a partner, business partner of 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 kezerashvili was the link between our men. but if the real links were confidential before, might they be confidential again? so fast forward to the present. the men all seem to have been key figures in the milton group running or owning tech companies and or the scam brand. 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 through his venture capital firm. he owned the branding and website for this tech company, which built the trading platform and website of everfx. the email servers for his personal companies were held on the same

private servers as those for everfx, axios and new age. he owns the building in kyiv, where the original call centre was moved to in 2020 and where they sold everfx and where mr 0range had an office where many of these companies were housed and which was raided in 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 interesting social media connections. kezerashvili regularly likes and shares facebook and linkedin posts from several tech groups as well as from everfx and its successor. and his facebook friends have

included at least 45 other people linked to some of these companies. and of course, he's also facebook friends with mr pink, mr blue, mrgreen and mr0range. and mr red? well, that's his cousin. we went to mr kezerashvili's £18 million house in london, to see if he could answer these questions about his role. hi, i'm a journalist. i'd like to speak with david kezerashvili. is he available? he's not. he's not available? 0k. thank you. 0k. bye bye. he wouldn't talk to us, but his lawyers made clear that... "mr kezerashvili strongly

denies any 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 people and it behind it prove nothing. they strongly deny our allegations, saying that ever affects is a legitimate, regulated platform. they deny knowledge of milton or 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. mgeladze said i completely deny these allegations. i am not involved in any way with milton. i have never owned call centres or any other businesses engaged in mis selling financial products.

neither of these two responded to our questions. everfx affects denied our allegations, saying that they are a legitimate and regulated platform where risks are fully explained. they investigated barry's case and found he was responsible for his losses. in our anonymous case, they told us her losses were as a result of her moving to an unconnected company and that they fully cooperated with the fca. the investigation alex and i started has culminated in police raids on milton offices across five countries. closing down 15 call centres. but only five suspects were arrested in those countries. all just employees. which is little consolation to the victims of milton. i feel completely embarrassed at how well i was fooled. i just don't want my friends to know how stupid i've been. i've always worked really

hard for everything i've earned in my life. losing $30,000 to a bunch of scammers... i was absolutely devastated by it. ijust don't feel that i could confidently trust anybody again. it's taken us well over a year to uncover the identities of some of the biggest players we believe are involved in this billion dollar scam. wading through this complex and sophisticated tangle of shell companies, digital evidence and crypto wallets, we felt able to name them for the first time. since the raids, alex has been tracking milton's crypto wallets.

so their volume is lower? their volume is lower. so that means the raids have had a big impact. yes, i think it is, because we see a very significant decrease in the turnover. good for victims. so the raids did have an impact. but our recent analysis suggests the scams are picking up again, now at nearly 85% of what they were. so can this billion dollar scam ever be stopped? the money that flows from these kind of crimes through the offshore world into the pockets of a small number of people, is so attractive and so corrupting that it's incredibly hard for any society in any political system to conjure up the wherewithal to stop it.

four months after the raids, we're not aware of any prosecutions of any of the people we've identified. but alex and i are not about to give up. hello. it was a drier weekend for many. still quite a bit of cloud around, but in the sunshine we saw temperatures reached just about 19 degrees celsius in northern ireland. that's the warmest day of the year so far.

and we could see the high teens again during the day on monday, the start of the week, certainly a little warmer with some sunshine. and on the whole, it's a drier week ahead, but there will be some showers around. and as this high pressure just drifts a little bit further northwards, we introduce more isobars, tightly packed lines here, stronger winds and one or two showers as well. and that keen easterly wind coming off the chilly north sea will be noticeable, particularly across the eastern half of the country. but as we go through the remainder of the night, its low cloud, mist and fog with generally light winds and a few showers here and there. so largely frost free, just a little bit chilly where we keep the clear skies and they could, as i say, could well be some fog around first thing on monday morning with some fog over the hills as well as that. so generally quite leaden skies, but brightening ,the april sunshine strong now, pushing the showers away, breaking the cloud up, butjust enough still for the odd shower here and there. but where we see the lengthy spells of sunshine, 17 or 18 on the cards, again, perhaps central and eastern areas up towards northern scotland, northern ireland once again.

but as we go through the evening and overnight, we start to pick up a bit more of an easterly breeze, as you can see, coming off the north sea, just ushering in some lower clouds, some sea air and fret on the east coast and foggy conditions around first thing on tuesday morning under this slack ridge of high pressure in the north. and it's the north, scotland, northern ireland, where we keep that high pressure for longest. in the south, we've got this little weather front starting to make its way across from the low countries to increase the risk of cloud on tuesday showers on wednesday, but it's that keen north wind, sorry, that keen east wind coming off the north sea that we are going to notice because at this time of year our sea temperatures are about as low as they get. so whilst inland, we'll see temperatures getting up into the mid possibly high teens, you can see just on the coast, they'll be pegged back because of those cold waters of the north sea. into wednesday, we've still got these tightly packed bars, these tightly packed isobars,

brisk winds pushing in, a few showers as well. and that risk continues, particularly across the southern half of england, wales through the rest of the week. so after warmish start, still a lot of dry weather, but temperatures just tapering off a little. more online.

welcome to newsday. reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines... dozens are killed, as fighting between rival armed factions continues to spread in sudan. a mass shooting at a teenage birthday party in alabama leaves four dead and 20 injured. the nurses�* union in england say they're prepared to hold strikes until christmas, unless more money is offered. appeals for calm after a former indian mp and his brother are shot dead on live tv. and spacex gets ready to launch the most powerful rocket ever made. live from our studio in singapore. this is bbc news.

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