What Ukraine’s scam call centres take from the people they call, and from the young people they hire
In short: On 5 September, Serhii Marchenko published a post arguing that the real damage of Ukraine’s fraud call centres is not only the stolen money but the generation being trained inside them. I went to the research to check. He is right, and the research says something more: the people on the other end of the line are almost always the most vulnerable person the caller could find, and the industry has been protected from the top. This post is my reading of the evidence, with sources, and a short practical section you can share with an older relative.
A post I could not put down
Serhii Marchenko wrote something on 5 September that stopped me. His argument is not mainly about money. It is about what a шахрайський кол-центр (shakhraiskyi kol-tsentr, a fraud call centre) does to the young person wearing the headset. He points to estimates of one to two thousand of these so called “офіси” (ofisy, offices) operating in Ukraine, tens of thousands of people inside them at any given moment, and turnover so fast that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians cycle through them in a single year.
Дякую, пане Сергію. I do not usually spend a Sunday reading criminology, but that post sent me to the sources, and I want to lay out what I found, because I think this belongs in a social work conversation and not only in a political one.
What the research actually says
The most complete account I could find is an April 2026 study by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva research body that tracks organized crime worldwide. Their Ukraine report is built on interviews with four former call centre workers, a member of parliament who served on the parliamentary commission investigating the industry, a representative of the Ukrainian interbank anti-fraud association EMA, and years of prior interviews with police, journalists and activists.
Their picture, in plain terms:
- Scam call centres now operate in all twenty four of Ukraine’s regions, including occupied territory. Dnipro and Kyiv remain the centres of gravity.
- Roughly sixty thousand Ukrainians are estimated to work in the industry, about two thirds of the headcount of the country’s legal banking sector.
- The whole industry may generate as much as a billion US dollars a month. By some measures it is now more profitable than the drug trade.
- It is highly concentrated. Reportedly three networks run most of it, with heavy involvement of long established criminal groups.
- Victims have been recorded in at least twenty nine countries. Canada is on that list.
Earlier reporting fills in the shape of a single office. In July 2023, a parliamentary investigative commission met in Dnipro and heard from civic investigators who had spent time with police and with workers inside one of these operations. Their account, published by Informator, described up to two thousand centres nationally, thirty to five hundred people in a single office, one office earning around a hundred thousand US dollars a day, and one team paying roughly twelve thousand dollars a month to unnamed police officers.
The people they call
This is the part my students recognise immediately, because they have met these people in placement.
Ukraine’s Cyber Police reported that internally displaced people were the main victims in 2023. Since the full scale invasion, callers have posed as staff of international aid organizations, run fake fundraisers for military equipment, demanded “rescue fees” from families whose relatives were captured or went missing in the occupied territories, and defrauded the families of soldiers who were killed. Pensioners have been called by someone posing as a law enforcement officer, told they stand accused of treason, and asked for money to make the problem disappear. In one documented case, a call centre in Khmelnytskyi targeted Ukrainian diaspora members in Canada and Canadians who had been donating to the Armed Forces.
Two findings from the research have stayed with me. The first is that socially engineered fraud, the kind where a human being builds a relationship with you, takes roughly fourteen times more money per incident than an impersonal online scam. The human voice is the weapon. The second is that being scammed once makes you more likely to be scammed again, because your name goes on a list that is sold and reused.
Over the years, students have told me about family members and clients who were caught this way. What comes through is never carelessness. It is trust, isolation, and a caller who had already done the homework.
The people they hire
Activists told the parliamentary commission that the overwhelming majority of workers in these offices are between fourteen and twenty years old. Fourteen. The GI-TOC researchers found offices generally prefer people aged fifteen to twenty eight, recruited openly on TikTok, OLX, work.ua and Telegram, with a glossy human resources manager and stories of a sixteen year old who supposedly bought his mother a car.
The reality the former workers described is different. One was promised eight hundred to a thousand US dollars a month and made about two hundred and fifty. Another was promised fifteen hundred to two thousand hryvnia a day and earned three hundred. There are fines for being late and for mispronunciation. Shifts can run twelve hours, six or seven days a week. Phones are left at the door. Scripts are memorised. Some offices hire psychologists to sharpen the technique and review recorded calls to find out why a victim got away.
Getting in is easy. Getting out is not, especially if you are good at it. Former employees described threats, beatings, and worse for people who tried to leave or move to a rival network. And then there is what stays. One former worker described what she saw in her colleagues as callousness, greed, and an emptiness in the eyes. The former human resources manager put it in one sentence: “Call centres are a trauma for everyone who works there.”
I want to be careful here, because two things are true at once. Most of the harm flows one way, from the office to the victim, and the person dialling made a choice. And also: a fourteen year old recruited by older boys who showed him their money is a child being used by adults. Both of those belong in the same paragraph.
The protection
There is one more piece, and it is why this story is in the news this week rather than last week.
The research describes “кришування” (kryshuvannia, paid protection from the very people whose job is to enforce the law) as the reason an office raided on Monday can reopen on Tuesday. Former employees described raids that ended as soon as the officers were paid. The parliamentarian on the commission said that whenever the commission travelled to a region, local call centres went quiet for two or three days beforehand, which tells you where the warnings came from. Figures of ten to fifteen thousand US dollars a month for a “roof” were cited.
On 4 September 2026, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office announced they had exposed a criminal organization allegedly headed by an official of the Office of the Prosecutor General, whose members are accused of systematically taking payments not to interfere with fraudulent call centres, and of laundering the proceeds through property and valuables. On 6 September the High Anti-Corruption Court began deciding preventive measures. The Prosecutor General’s Office said the employee under scrutiny would be suspended for the duration of the investigation.
None of this is proven. Suspicion is not conviction, and the court has work to do. But I will say the obvious: if the allegations hold, then people paid to protect the public were instead protecting an industry whose business model is taking the last savings of frightened old people.
A word about who else is reading this
I want to be direct about something, because I write in Ukrainian and in English and I know who picks up stories like this one.
Within hours of the searches at the Prosecutor General’s Office, Russian outlets were running the story hard. That is not new. President Putin has claimed that Ukrainian call centres were raised to the level of state policy, an organized line of attack on Russians. Russia’s security service has made similar claims. The GI-TOC researchers say plainly in their methodology section that Moscow has an obvious interest in amplifying both the scale of Ukrainian scamming and the claim that the state protects it, and that this has to be taken into account when reading Russian sources.
So let me put four facts beside that.
This is not a Ukrainian invention. The model came out of Israel in the mid 2000s, moved to Georgia, and from there into the wider region. Ukraine became a hotspot after 2014, which is to say after Russia annexed Crimea and started the war in the Donbas. The same industry runs today in India, Cambodia, Mexico, Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia itself. Worldwide, something like seventy million scam calls are placed every day. Ukraine has a serious problem. Ukraine does not have a unique disease.
Ukrainians are the victims too, and mostly. Sources in Ukraine’s Cyber Police say calls to Russia in 2022 and 2023 were never more than ten to fifteen per cent of the total. The parliamentarian who sat on the investigative commission put it bluntly: many workers claimed they were working against Russians when in fact most of their targets were in Ukraine or the European Union, because a call centre does not care whose money it is. The “we only hit the enemy” line is a recruiting script, not a fact.
Russia is not the cure for this. It is not even trying to be. The fraud money does not build Ukraine, it goes offshore and into cryptocurrency. And the reason you are reading about a suspect inside the Prosecutor General’s Office is that Ukrainian anti-corruption detectives were able to conduct searches there, Ukrainian journalists were able to publish it, and a Ukrainian court is hearing it in the open with reporters in the room. That combination does not exist in Russia and cannot exist in Russia. A country where the equivalent case can be brought is not the same as a country where it cannot.
Nobody should read this and conclude that Ukraine deserves less support. The support goes to the army and to civilians under bombardment. The fraud money never touched it. If anything, the case for helping Ukraine finish the job of cleaning its own house is stronger, not weaker, and Western partners have real leverage here, because many of the victims of these offices are their own citizens.
Naming a crime inside your own house is not disloyalty. It is what a country does when it intends to keep the house.
Why this is a social work question
Because manipulation is a curriculum, and so is resistance to it.
I receive these calls like everyone else, and I do not fall for them. I want to be honest about why. It is not character. In my social work education I took a course in психологія управління (psykholohiia upravlinnia, the psychology of management and influence), where we studied how influence and manipulation work, step by step, and how to interrupt them. I recommend that course to every student I meet. What one person can be trained to do to you, another person can be trained to see coming.
That is also the harder half of the lesson. The techniques do not stop being techniques when the person using them holds an office, a title, or a budget. Recognising the pattern is easier than acting on it when the person running the script has power over your job or your case file. Which is why the current investigations matter, and why they are difficult.
And because this is happening while Ukraine is at war. Ukrainians are dying at the front while other Ukrainians treat the war as a market: fake charities, fake equipment purchases, fake rescue fees for prisoners of war. Ukraine is fighting Russia and has to fight this at the same time, inside its own borders. That second front is exhausting, it is not optional, and it deserves the same support as the first.
If you get the call
Print this, or send it to someone who needs it.
- Nobody legitimate creates urgency on the phone. Banks, police and government offices do not require a decision in the next four minutes. Urgency is the tool, not the message.
- Hang up and call back on a number you already have. Not the number they give you, not the number on your screen. Caller ID is trivially faked.
- Never install anything because a caller asked you to. AnyDesk, TeamViewer, a “new banking app”: these hand over your accounts.
- A stranger who knows your name is not a friend. Names, addresses and card details are bought in bulk. Knowing your details proves nothing.
- Tell one other person before you send money. A single sentence to a family member or neighbour breaks the isolation the script depends on. Scripts are built to keep you alone on the line.
- If it already happened, say so out loud. Report it, and tell someone you trust. Shame is what keeps a victim quiet, and quiet is what makes the second call possible.
Only one number in Canada is an emergency service, and it does not call you
This is what I say to my students every term, and I will say it here.
In Canada, 911 is the emergency service. That is the whole list. And 911 calls out to you only when you have already called them. The RCMP does not phone you to say you are under investigation and can settle it today. The Canada Revenue Agency does not phone you demanding gift cards, e-transfers or cryptocurrency. Your bank does not phone you and ask you to move your savings to a “safe account.” Border services does not phone you about a parcel. If a voice on the phone is creating an emergency, the emergency is the voice.
I also tell my students that I am not an emergency service. I answer email, I answer messages, and none of it is a fire. If a professor is not an emergency service, neither is a stranger with your area code on the display. Whatever it is can wait twenty minutes. Talk to someone you love before you take any action that cannot be undone.
One more thing worth knowing here in Kamloops: local fraudsters have spoofed 250-828-3000, the Kamloops RCMP’s own non-emergency line, so that it appeared on residents’ call display. A real number on your screen proves nothing at all. Hang up, find the number yourself, call back.
Numbers to keep where you can find them. Canada has people whose entire job is helping victims of fraud. You are not bothering anyone by calling them.
- 911: only if someone is in immediate danger or a crime is in progress.
- Kamloops RCMP, non-emergency: 250-828-3000, 560 Battle Street. Lower value incidents can be filed through the detachment’s online crime reporting tool, which gives you a file number. Outside Kamloops, use your own local police non-emergency line.
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: 1-888-495-8501, or report online at antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca. The CAFC is run by the RCMP with partner agencies and is the national collection point. Report even if you lost nothing and even if you feel foolish. The CAFC estimates that fewer than five per cent of victims report, which is exactly why individual cases look small and networks stay invisible. Note also that fraudsters impersonate the CAFC itself, promising to recover money you already lost, for a fee. The real CAFC never phones you asking for money.
- Your bank’s fraud line: the number printed on the back of your card, never the number the caller gives you. Call them first if money has already moved.
- VictimLinkBC: 1-800-563-0808, call or text, twenty four hours a day, across BC and Yukon, with service in up to 150 languages.
- Seniors Abuse and Information Line (SAIL), Seniors First BC: 1-866-437-1940 (604-437-1940 in the Lower Mainland), Monday to Friday, with interpretation available. For older adults and for anyone worried about an older adult.
- Credit bureaus, if your identity or documents are involved: Equifax Canada 1-800-465-7166 and TransUnion Canada 1-800-663-9980. Call both. They do not share fraud alerts with each other.
And take the course. If your workplace, your union, your seniors centre or your library offers fraud awareness training, take it, and take an older relative with you. What one person can be trained to do to you, another person can be trained to see coming.
To anyone weighing an offer from an “office”: the money is real and it comes fast. So does what it costs. You would be trained to feel nothing while a frightened woman hands you her funeral savings, taught to call her a mark and to call yourself elite. You can hide that job from an employer. You cannot hide it from yourself, from the people who raised you, or from the children who will carry your name. Recovery is possible. It is slow, and nobody at the office is offering a course in it.
Love. Care. Share.
References
Антикорупційна правозахисна рада [Anti-Corruption Human Rights Council]. (2023, July 13). Телефонні шахраї розкрадали пожертви на військових [Phone fraudsters were stealing donations meant for the military]. https://com1.org.ua/telefonni-shakhrai-rozkradaly-pozhertvy-na-vijskovykh/
Антикорупційна правозахисна рада [Anti-Corruption Human Rights Council]. (2023, October 20). Колл-центри: шахрайство в Україні [Call centres: Fraud in Ukraine]. https://com1.org.ua/koll-tsentry-shakhrajstvo-v-ukraini/
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. (n.d.). Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/index-eng.htm
Competition Bureau Canada. (n.d.). How to report fraud and scams in Canada. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/fraud-and-scams/tips-and-advice/how-report-fraud-and-scams-canada
Equifax Canada. (n.d.). Contact us. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://www.equifax.ca/personal/contact-us/
Province of British Columbia. (n.d.). VictimLinkBC. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/justice/criminal-justice/victims-of-crime/victimlinkbc
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (n.d.). Contact Kamloops RCMP. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://rcmp.ca/en/bc/kamloops/contact
Seniors First BC. (n.d.). Seniors Abuse and Information Line (SAIL). Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://seniorsfirstbc.ca/programs/sail/
TransUnion Canada. (n.d.). Fraud victims resources. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://www.transunion.ca/assistance/fraud-victims-resources
Бельмас, К., Паламарчук, П., & Арунян, О. (2026, September 6). ВАКС обирає запобіжний захід посадовцю Офісу Генпрокурора у справі про шахрайські кол-центри [The High Anti-Corruption Court is deciding a preventive measure for a Prosecutor General’s Office official in the fraudulent call centre case]. Суспільне Новини. https://suspilne.media/1396724-vaks-obirae-zapobiznij-zahid-posadovcu-ofisu-genprokurora-u-spravi-pro-sahrajski-kol-centri/
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. (2026). Kyiv calling: The scam call centre phenomenon in Ukraine. https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Kyiv-calling-The-scam-call-centre-phenomenon-in-Ukraine-GI-TOC-April-2026.pdf
Marchenko, S. (2026, September 5). А ви ж розумієте, що означають шахрайські колцентри для українського суспільства? [But do you understand what fraudulent call centres mean for Ukrainian society?] [Image attached] [Post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=28780423078230264&set=a.420777641288187
Meegan-Vickers, J. (2023, October 21). Scam call centres in Ukraine. Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/scam-call-centres-in-ukraine/
Палій, О. [Palii, O.]. (2023, July 26). Тысячи “сотрудников”, взятки, крипта и пытки: как устроены мошеннические колл-центры в Украине [Thousands of “employees,” bribes, crypto and torture: How fraudulent call centres in Ukraine are organized]. Інформатор UA. https://informator.ua/ru/tysyachi-sotrudnikov-vzyatki-kripta-i-pytki-kak-ustroeny-moshennicheskie-koll-centry-v-ukraine
Шахрайські кол-центри в Україні [Fraudulent call centres in Ukraine]. (n.d.). In Вікіпедія. Retrieved September 6, 2026, from https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Шахрайські_кол-центри_в_Україні