Georgian authorities ‘seize assets’ of call centre scammers

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Georgia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has reportedly seized assets belonging to ‘managers and agents’ of a scam call centre revealed by an OCCRP investigation to have scammed victims in Europe and Canada out of $35 million between 2022 and 2025.

Studio Monitori reported that the state agency applied to the Public Registry on Thursday with a request to register the seizures.

In early March, an Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation exposed how a scam call centre in Tbilisi, the A.K. Group, scammed victims in Europe and Canada.

It brought together 32 journalists, including from Georgia’s iFact and Squander Detector, and Studio Monitori to investigate the ‘scam empire’ over eight months. The investigation focused heavily on the lavish lifestyles led by the company’s management and employees.

According to the investigation, the owner of A.K. Group, 36-year-old Meri Shotadze, managed a group of young people who speak a variety of languages. They also deduced that Akaki Kevkhishvili, 33, could be Shotadze’s business partner.

iFact reported that after journalists asked the suspected scammers questions about the nature of their work, they began to deactivate their social networks, delete their accounts, and empty their offices.

Studio Monitori reported on Thursday that the General Prosecutor’s office seized Shotadze’s company shares and real estate, ‘which she transferred to another person on 25 February’.

According to iFact, Shotadze ‘on 24–25 February, […] sold two apartments she owned in Tbilisi. Her mother, her representative, participated in the sale process in her place’.

Studio Monitori wrote that Kevkhishvili’s assets had also been seized, in addition to property registered in his mother’s name.

Studio Monitori told OC Media that Shotadze and Kevkhishvili’s company shares were seized not from A.K Group but from Avejis Sakhli 13 [Furniture House 13], in which Shotadze had a 34% stake and Kevkhishvili had 33%.

Studio Monitori reported that the authorities also seized two apartments owned by one of the scammers employed by the company, Mariam Charchiani, who featured heavily in the investigation. They said that the two apartments were registered in her husband’s name.

They also reported that the authorities seized a parking space in Tbilisi owned by another employee, Lana Vakhtangadze, and a Tbilisi apartment and a plot of land in Mtskheta owned by another employee, Tarikh Sultanov.

According to the OCCRP investigation, A.K. Group LLC operated out of two offices located in Tbilisi with around 85 employees. They are believed to have stolen $35.3 million from more than 6,100 people worldwide between May 2022 and February 2025.