DONATE At the Milton Group’s 2020 New Year’s bash in Kyiv, as the company’s hundreds of young staffers drank and danced the night away, some of the most important men in the room slipped away to pose for a photograph together. Looking almost identical in their dark suits and shaved heads, and surrounded by a cadre of bodyguards, they lined up in front of a backdrop of pine fronds festooned with golden baubles. “Happy New Year! Milton Group,” the festive decoration read. This image, uploaded to Instagram by at least two participants, was not just a party memento, but an important clue to journalists that Milton’s activities extended far beyond the borders of Ukraine, where it had been orchestrating a boiler-room scam out of a Kyiv mall that duped victims out of their life savings. Now, using evidence from social media posts, interviews with insiders, and undercover reporting, OCCRP can reveal that Milton Group’s Kyiv call center is part of a web of similar operations across several countries that employ an army of salespeople to hawk dubious investments to victims around the world. Click here to read our earlier investigation about Milton’s operations in Kyiv, and the victims around the world who lost everything to its predatory sales staff. In the Instagram party snapshot, an official adviser to Albania’s defense minister stood in the center row. Close to him was a man named David Todua. Todua, a Georgian-born Israeli citizen, was already on journalists’ radar due to the testimony of a whistleblower from inside the call center, who named him as an important company official who visited its offices in Kyiv. The whistleblower also reported the case to Swedish authorities, naming Todua as the man behind the operation. Credit: Alexander Mahmoud/DN The whistleblower in Kyiv. Although no official documents connect Todua to Milton Group, he owns the online payment platform that was used to handle payments from people being scammed by Milton. (Todua strongly denies any formal or informal involvement in Milton Group.) After handing a cache of internal documents to journalists, the whistleblower agreed to return to the Ukrainian capital to attend — and secretly record — the firm’s annual new year’s party, which promised to be lavish. The theme was “The Great Gatsby,” the classic American novel of Jazz Age excess, and the event featured elaborate performances, neon lights, and prizes of cash and cars. There were also speeches by the firm’s leadership and the presentation of a birthday cake studded with three candles, marking Milton’s anniversary of operations. Milton Group CEO Jacob Keselman fawningly thanked “David” — whom he referred to as the “father” of the company — and presented him with a gift along with the festive cake. The whistleblower, who attended the event, identified this “David” as David Todua. (Todua confirmed to journalists he had attended the party, but only as a guest of Keselman. Keselman, for his part, told journalists he did not know Todua.) Keselman also hinted at the existence of a wider Milton network when he formally welcomed attendees from Macedonia, Albania, and Georgia to the party. “Last year [2019] we proved that we are the number one company in Ukraine. Let’s prove this year that we are the number one company in the world!” he exhorted a crowd of hundreds of cheering employees.

From Kyiv to Tirana: “I Know We Cheat People” The Great Gatsby fete wasn’t Keselman’s first holiday party of the season. In December, according to social media postings, he had attended another corporate celebration, this one in the Albanian capital, Tirana. There, he posed for selfies alongside a tall man with distinctive blond coloring, identified on social media as Andrii Romanko and tagged with the Albanian flag. Credit: OCCRP Milton Group CEO Jacob Keselman posing with friends Andrii Romanko and Danilo Z. at a corporate New Year’s party in Tirana, Albania, in December. The blond man looked familiar to reporters. He had also been photographed alongside Keselman on a number of other occasions, including at Milton Group’s 2019 staff New Year’s party, a similar party at a hotel in Tbilisi in December, and even in casualwear on a beach. Following a tip that a new call center had opened in an office building on the outskirts of Tirana, a reporter for OCCRP filmed the same bearded blond man emerging from a high-end coffee shop on the ground floor. The offices were heavily guarded and equipped with security cameras. Company documents provided by an insider, and seen by OCCRP, reveal that the center has been run by two firms, CTA Groupe Shpk and APA Liaison Shpk. CTA Groupe is owned by APA Liaison, which is fully owned by Amant Josifi, the same Defense Ministry adviser who had been pictured with Todua. The 31-year-old Josifi has powerful connections in Albania. He has been an official adviser to the Minister of Defense since December 2017, when he was appointed by Olta Xhaçka, a member of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party. Josifi is also a former business partner of the prime minister’s brother, Ols (Olsi) Rama, with whom he co-owned a telecommunications and telemarketing firm, Pegasus Communications Shpk, until Josifi sold his shares in December 2017. His mother, Pranvera Strakosha, is a former judge who is now the Commissioner for the Oversight of the Civil Service, an ombudsman charged with protecting the rights of government employees. In response to questions from OCCRP, Josifi confirmed that he owned a call center in Albania, and that he had attended the Milton Group party in January. But he denied any formal ties to Milton Group and said his center was entirely unrelated. He said he was “simply on vacation” in Kyiv during the time of the party, and was acquainted with David Todua. “I first met Mr. Todua in Israel, and then at some events,” he said without elaborating. Josifi insisted that any mention of an Albanian call center at the Milton party did not refer to his own business. He did concede, however, that Romanko had been employed as an “operator” at his call center since 2018. He insisted that Romanko did not work for Milton Group in Kiev. Credit: OCCRP Jacob Keselman (left), the former CEO of Milton Group Ukraine and current CEO of the entire company, poses at the Milton Group’s 2019 New Year’s party with Danilo Z. (center) and Romanko (left). The call center insider, who spoke to OCCRP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said Romanko was a frequent and important presence in the office and was responsible for providing salespeople with lists of potential clients’ phone numbers. OCCRP has seen no documentary evidence that the Tirana center employed the same techniques as the Kyiv one, or defrauded anyone. The insider did, however, tell OCCRP that the center’s operations were structured much like in Kyiv, with hundreds of young salespeople making up to 500 calls a day to clients around the world, trying to convince them to send money for investments that did not really exist. They made a minimum of 300 euros a month, with bonuses for bringing in more cash. As in Kyiv, different “desks” targeted speakers of different languages. Credit: OCCRP Credit: OCCRP Credit: OCCRP Brands allegedly sold by the Tirana call center have been red-flagged by regulators in Europe. Workers sell these investments through so-called “brands,” each with its own website carefully designed to make it look like a plausible financial firm. The insider said the Tirana call center had recently been hawking three different brands: CryptoKartal, AurumPro, and Virtual Stocks. “I get people on the phone and show them a video showing various people earning millions of euros by joining a Bitcoin stock exchange, and I tell them it is a good chance for them to earn,” the person said. “I know we cheat people.” The insider also described a two-phase process similar to that in Kyiv, with one group of salespeople using new “brands” to reel clients in and obtain an initial investment, and another group keeping them hooked and wringing more money out of them. “They get everything they [customers] have,” the person said. Spanish authorities have warned consumers that CryptoKartal is not properly licensed as an investment broker; Virtual Stocks and AurumPro have been similarly red-flagged in Italy. A Spanish woman who appeared on a leaked list of Milton Group’s “customers” told journalists she had lost $300 to Cryptokartal. (It is possible that other scam call centers are also marketing this brand, and OCCRP has seen no evidence that the victim was contacted from Albania.) Josifi did not directly respond to questions about whether his center was marketing CryptoKartal, Virtual Stocks, or AurumPro. He said he had placed the business in a passive trust after taking up his government position as defense ministry adviser, and was no longer directly involved in its management.