Nov 18, 2024 | The parents of a British teenager who took his own life after becoming a victim of sextortion have made a direct appeal to criminals in Nigeria to stop "terrorising" the vulnerable.
Murray Dowey, from Dunblane, was only 16 when he ended his life last year. It is thought he had been tricked by criminals in West Africa into sending intimate pictures of himself and then blackmailed.
Sextortion often involves victims being sent a nude picture or video before being asked to send their own in return. They then receive threats the material will be shared with family and friends unless they meet the blackmailer's demands - pressure it is believed led Murray to take his own life.
Nov 24, 2023 | Interest-based investment portals on the Internet are one of the biggest scams of our time. People sign up, hoping to invest. Instead, they are cheated out of billions. In Germany alone, thousands of victims have fallen victim to their own gullibility.
Filmmakers Niklas Resch and Caroline Uhl meet with victims and investigators, then track down some of the perpetrators behind the scams. They discover that trying to put a stop to this kind of fraud is like tilting at windmills. Moreover: Victims and perpetrators may have more in common than they think.
Ulrike Schneider was cheated out of a lot of money. Ironically, she lost over 10,000 euros because she tried to do a good job investing her savings. She invested money with an online financial portal called TradeInvest90 because it promised good profits in a short time. What Schneider did not suspect: The portal was run by an international gang of fraudsters.
In the film, we also meet Adrian. In his late 20s, he was living in Kosovo with hardly any money. So when he received an offer for a well-paid call center job, he jumped at it. But he quickly realized that his job was illegal. His job was to pretend to be a financial market expert for portals such as TradeInvest90 - and thus to take money from German-speaking investors such as Ulrike Schneider over the phone.
Adrian and his colleagues bilked their victims out of millions - and earned enormous sums themselves. The head of this gang of fraudsters has become a multi-millionaire. He shamelessly squanders the savings of his victims.
The fraud continued for several years until investigators from the State Criminal Police Office in Saarbrücken put a stop to the gang - following a complex investigation. But others continue to steal vast sums of money using the same scam to this day.
The filmmakers have succeeded in providing a deep insight into the innermost workings of a highly organized gang of fraudsters. For the first time, the film shows original material from inside the call center. The documentary contrasts the views and motives of victims, perpetrators and investigators - and shows the psychological mechanisms at work in both the deceived and the deceivers.
Apr 13, 2023 | The billion-dollar scam: How companies used Premier League sponsorship to target unsuspecting football fans.
Investigative reporter Simona Weinglass leads a BBCEye investigation into a criminal network, believed to have scammed more than a billion dollars from victims across the globe.
The organisation sponsored a top-tier football club to promote its online trading platform, promising investors the chance of astonishing returns. But what lies behind the claims? The search – from a mansion in London, to a forest in Scandinavia and a call centre in Georgia – reveals a web of deceit. We hear from victims, undercover agents and police, in a bid to track down who’s in charge.
Jul 2, 2023 | Falling victim to a scammer is an awful feeling. It’s not only the theft of money or personal information that stings, the thought of being tricked by lowlife crooks is enough to enrage anyone. Statistics show more than 95 per cent of Australians are exposed to telephone, text and internet scams each year. Even more alarming is the amount of money these thieves are stealing from us. Last year it exceeded three billion dollars.
