Ukraine’s scam call centres may generate up to $1 billion a month

Scam call centres in Ukraine target people in dozens of countries and may generate up to $1 billion a month. The estimate comes from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

The organisation says about 60,000 people work in the sector, including Ukrainians and foreigners. Its study draws on interviews with former call-centre employees, law-enforcement officials, cyber investigators and journalists.

How the bank-call scam works

One victim was Natalia, a 50-year-old Kyiv resident whose name was changed at her request. A man called from a number resembling one listed on the website of a major Ukrainian bank and claimed to work for its security service.

He said the bank had supposedly stopped a transfer from her card and that she needed to open a new account to protect her money. Natalia transferred several tens of thousands of hryvnias before realising she had been defrauded. She contacted her banks and the cyber police but said she did not receive an immediate response.

From investment scams to Ukrainian offices

The study traces the current model to investment fraud that spread in Israel about 15 years ago and later in Georgia. From around 2014, technologies and managers from Georgia began moving to Ukraine.

Dnipro had the largest concentration of such centres in recent years. Researchers say illegal operations adopted telephone scripts, customer-handling methods and management practices previously developed in legitimate banking call centres.

Centre estimates and enforcement results

A study dated April 2026 says Ukraine had approximately 1,000–2,000 call centres in mid-2023. The authors estimate that subsequent law-enforcement activity reduced the number by about one-third.

Former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said that over 12 months authorities conducted more than 1,050 searches, shut down about 340 call centres and stopped the operation of more than 5,000 operator workstations. He also reported 147 criminal proceedings, notices of suspicion for 183 people and indictments sent to court against 93 people.

GI-TOC’s estimate of about 60,000 workers is substantially higher than the number of closed workstations cited by Kravchenko. The researchers say centres can quickly reappear because they require only premises, equipment and staff to restart.

Court statistics since the invasion

According to Opendatabot, Ukrainian courts have issued at least 18 verdicts in cases linked to scam call centres since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The cases involve 27 defendants, with 10 verdicts recorded in Dnipropetrovsk region.

The platform said only two convicted people received actual prison terms—five and eight years. The others received suspended sentences or fines.

Parliament established a temporary investigative commission in 2023, and it proposed legislative changes in 2024. Lawmakers approved only part of them. After suspicions were raised against representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy submitted new bills aimed at strengthening the fight against scam call centres.