Scam call centres are paying up to €1,200 per person for the contact details of potential Irish victims, leaked documents from a scam operation obtained by The Irish Times show.
Globally, Irish people are among the most sought-after targets for investment scam operations, ranking just behind victims from Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The data of Irish people is collected after they click on fraudulent social media ads, usually featuring artificial intelligence (AI) versions of celebrities advertising lucrative trading opportunities.
The ads are becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to discern as fake, leading to more and more people falling victim to the scam.
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According to Garda figures, investment scam losses have increased by 21 per cent in the last three months.
These ads are changed frequently and are often adapted to current events. One of the latest versions features an AI version of Fine Gael’s presidential candidate Heather Humphreys advertising fake investing opportunities.
After clicking on the ads, users are asked to enter their contact details. These details are then sold on by the marketing companies as “leads” to scam call centres, typically based in eastern Europe.
Using sophisticated sales pitches, the call centres then ensnare the victims in investment scams, often defrauding them out of tens of thousands of euro.
Leads on potential Irish victims are selling for an average of $1,078 (€926), with some going for as much as €1,207, analysis shows.
Globally, the most valuable victims come from the Netherlands. Dutch leads sell for an average of €1,207.
Many different companies are involved in gathering these leads and they compete with each other for the call centres’ business.
Details of the transactions are contained in a vast data leak from a Georgian scam call centre that was provided to The Irish Times by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-government investigative journalism organisation.
The leak includes data on the inner workings of the criminal operation, including internal financial records, staff training material and recordings of 20,000 phone calls with potential victims between May 2022 and February 2025.
This includes more than 11,000 calls made to Irish phone numbers. Analysis by The Irish Times has identified 31 Irish victims who lost a combined total of €299,135 between them.
This includes a 76-year-old man who lost €61,720, and a high-ranking diplomat who lost more than €31,000.
The victims came from a broad range of backgrounds and included IT workers, nurses, a builder, an accountant and a doctor.
Overall, the Georgia operation made €30.5 million from 6,179 victims. Its operations were shut down after police there launched an investigation earlier this year but many of the scammers are believed to already be back at work.
A separate data leak obtained by the journalism consortiums Investigate Europe and the Balkan Independent Reporting Network (BIRN) details the operation of a Serbian scam call centre that defrauded 170 Irish victims before it was raided by police in 2023.
It formed part of a network of scam operations based in Serbia, Bulgaria and Cyprus that are linked to a wealthy Israeli businessman. Europol stated the Serbian operation is believed to have targeted more than 70,000 people worldwide and to have brought in an estimated €250 million through investment scams.
Material contained in the leaks showed both scam call centres operated like legitimate businesses, complete with HR departments, sales targets and performance evaluations for staff.
Once caught in the scam, victims are encouraged to “invest” increasing amounts of money in various schemes and are given access to fake websites showing their investments growing. When they try to withdraw the earnings, they are usually told they must first pay thousands in fees.
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Last year almost €31 million was reported stolen in Ireland through investment fraud, up from €14 million in 2021.
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