#scams You get sucked in’: crypto scam victims on how they lost up to £162,000sprat to catch a mackerel” is how one victim describes being reeled in by the skameri working from call centres hundreds of miles away in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. It is the local term for scammers and a huge data leak reveals the inner workings of a fraud network that has tricked Britons out of £9m.

Like in any call centre, the script is always the same. For the victim it starts by clicking on a (fake) social media ad or news alert. The promotion tips a great crypto investment but it’s a trick, leading only to fraudsters impersonating a real business.

Eager investors hand over a relatively small sum at first, say £250, and before they know it – thanks to clever software displaying a seemingly live trading screen – they are getting rich. But the profit is fiction, serving as bait: victims lose the big money trying to cash out. The windfall is “just one step away”, blocked by the need for one more payment – a broker’s fee, or a tax bill. It only ends when the victim is broke.

The 1m audio files from the Georgia leak include the stories of thousands of victims. To uncover some of them we grouped calls by phone number, reviewing calls of 60 seconds or longer, and listened to how the scam unfolded. In some cases we spoke to those targeted about the impact it had on their lives.