The Surveillance secrets team

The Surveillance secrets team was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Surveillance secrets.

Trove of surveillance data challenges what we thought we knew about location tracking tools, who they target and how far they have spread

In June 2025, a sharp-suited Austrian executive of one of the world’s most significant yet little-known surveillance companies told a prospective client that he could “go to prison” for organising the deal they were discussing. But the conversation did not end there.

The executive, Günther Rudolph, was seated at a booth at ISS World in Prague, a secretive trade fair for advanced surveillance technology companies. He went on to explain how his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software called Altamides, capable of pinpointing any person in the world. The buyer? A private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protestors. “I think we’re the only ones who can deliver,” Rudolph said.

What Rudolph did not know: he was talking to an undercover reporter.

The road to that conference room in Prague began when a reporter from the international investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports found a vast archive of data on the deep web. The archive contained evidence of more than a million tracking operations: efforts to grab real-time locations of thousands of people worldwide. Investigating that archive — and First Wap’s activities — drew together more than 80 journalists from 14 media outlets, coordinated by Lighthouse and paper trail media in Germany.

What emerged is one of the most complete pictures to date of the modern surveillance industry. The tracking archive is unprecedented in scope, and reveals how the company and its clients surveilled all types of people from all over the world. Reporters interviewed more than a hundred victims, as well as former employees and industry insiders. A trove of confidential emails and documents provide a detailed inside account of how First Wap’s tech was marketed to authoritarian governments and accessed by corporate actors. Behind closed doors, First Wap’s executives touted their ability to hack WhatsApp accounts, and laughed about evading sanctions.

The surveillance industry has long maintained that its tools are deployed exclusively by government agencies to fight serious crime, portraying instances of misuse as rare exceptions. This investigation definitively dismantles that narrative.

Stories reported by:

Contributors:

Elena Debre – Reporter
Bashar Deeb – Reporter
Tomas Statius – Reporter
Sabrina Slipchenko – Reporter
Sarasvati Nagesh Thuppadolla – Reporter
Tessa Pang – Impact editor
Wael Eskandar – Impact producer
Ariadne Papagapitos – Impact editor
Daniel Howden – Editor
Antonella Napolitano – Impact producer
Dayo Aiyetan – Reporter
Morgan Childs – Audio producer
Abdou Malah – Reporter
Michela Wrong – A veteran writer on Africa
Maria Christoph – Social Media
Dajana Kollig – Factcheck
Frederik Obermaier – Editor
Hakan Tanriverdi – Factcheck
Lorenzo Bodrero – Visuals & Graphics
Henrik Bøe – Reporter
Jim Briggs – Sound Designer & Engineer
Beatrice Cambarau – Social Media & Communication
Olivier Clairouin –
Artis Curiskis – Fact checker
Jörg Diehl – Editor
Benjamin Dyrdal – Photographer
Per Øyvind Fange – Reporter
Verdiana Festa – Social Media & Communication
ZDF Frontal –
Janine Große – Fact Checker
Nadia Hamdan – Audio Producer
Pavla Holcova – Editor
Tobias Holub – Podcaster
Uwe Jürgens – Lawyer
Monika Köstinger – Visuals
Al Letson – Host
Undine Meinke – Visuals
Ruth Murai – Research Editor
Sophie Murgaia – Editor
Christoph Neuwirth – Podcast Producer
Lu Olkowski – Audio Editor
Yosea Arga Pramudita –
Kamila Ramezani –
Daniel Retschitzegger – Podcaster
Morten Rød – Reporter
Lea Rossa – Visuals
Per-Kåre Sandbakk – Photographer
Avi Scharf – Editor
Daniel Schulman – Editor
Marianne Szegedy-Maszak – Editor
Taki Telonidis – Audio Editor
Praga Utama –
Caroline Utti – Visual Graphics
Sam Van Pykeren – Video Producer
Adam Vieira – Art
Anne Vinding – Editor
Swantje Wehr
James West – Producer
Zsolt Wilhelm – Podcaster

The production of this investigation was supported by a grant from the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund.

PUBLICATIONS

The Scam empire team

The Scam empire team was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Scam empire.

Scam Empire is a major cross-border investigation offering an unparalleled insight into the global investment-scam industry.

A collaborative effort by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Swedish Television (SVT), and over 30 global media partners, it is based on an unprecedented leak of nearly two terabytes of data.

The investigation pulled back the curtain on two groups of call centers based in Israel, Europe and the country of Georgia, showing that together they defrauded at least 32,000 people out of more than $275 million since 2021.

Leaked information included tens of thousands of hours of phone calls between scammers and their victims, as well as screen recordings and spreadsheets, revealing how call center employees used tactics, including false identities, forged paperwork, and deceptive advertising to lure victims into handing over money for imaginary “investments”.

Reporters also traced the broader business ecosystem enabling the scams. This included unregulated payment processors, tech providers that kept operations running, and third-party marketing firms that brought in victims. The investigation revealed how a sophisticated network of legitimate-seeming vendors and platforms helped this illicit industry flourish — often with little regulatory oversight.

On the opposite end were the victims. Many had harrowing stories of being pushed to their mental and financial limits by scammers. They told of crippling debt, trauma, and an inability to trust strangers. Several said they had contemplated suicide.

Altogether these findings formed a comprehensive investigation that illuminated an industry built entirely on deception, one of the clearest views yet into how global investment scams operate.

Contributors:

Project Coordination: Joachim Dyfvermark (SVT); Antonio Baquero (OCCRP), Kelly Bloss (OCCRP), Lawrence Marzouk (OCCRP)

Journalists: Lorenzo Bagnoli (IRPIMedia), Sophia Baumann (Paper Trail Media), Lars Bové (De Tijd), Tom Bolsius (Follow The Money), Julian Bonnici (Amphora Media), Jacob Borg (Times of Malta), Inese Braže (Re:Baltica), Luc Caregari (Reporter.lu), Lindita Cela, Šarūnas Černiauskas (Siena), Maria Cheresheva (OCCRP), Atanas Chobanov (Bird), Riccardo Coluccini (IRPIMedia), Andreas Cosma (CIReN), Turgut Denizgil (CIReN), Paul Émile d’Entremont (CBC/Radio-Canada), Victoria Denys (Le Monde), Pamela Duncan (The Guardian), Karim El Hadj (Le Monde), Ester Eriksson (Qurium), Margaux Farran (OCCRP), Eiliv Frich Flydal (VG), Juliette Garside (The Guardian), Michael Goodier (The Guardian), Simon Goodley (The Guardian), Mariia Horban (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty), Eva Jung (Berlingske), SannaKlinghoffer (SVT), Minna Knus-Galán (YLE), Remy Koens (Follow The Money), Lukas Kotkamp (Follow The Money), Miglė Krancevičiūtė (Siena.lt), Moritz Kudermann (ZDF), Damien Leloup (Le Monde), Tord Lundström (Qurium), Christodoulos Mavroudis (CIReN), Gur Megiddo, Bastian Obermayer (Paper Trail Media), Gisle Oddstad (VG), Marta Orosz (ZDF); Stelios Orphanides (OCCRP), Greete Palgi (Delfi), Begoña P. Ramírez (Infolibre), Daiva Repeckaite (Amphora Media), Florian Reynaud (Le Monde), Laurent Schmit (Reporter.lu), Graham Stack (OCCRP), Holger Roonemaa (OCCRP), Iulia Stănoiu (Context.ro), Tom Stocks (OCCRP), Dimitar Stoyanov (Bird), Nora Thorp Bjørnstad (VG), Alexis Troma (Le Monde), Björn Tunbäck (SVT), Kornelija Ukolovaitė (Siena.lt), Romy van der Burgh (Investico), Linda van der Pol (Investico), Dewald van Rensburg (AmaBhungane), Simona Weinglass (OCCRP), Zoe Wood (The Guardian), Emma Wright (OCCRP), Jeff Yates (CBC/Radio-Canada), Frédéric Zalac (CBC/Radio-Canada), Kira Zalan (OCCRP).

Six Georgian journalists contributed vital reporting to this project but cannot be named for security reasons.

The OCCRP Project Team

Publications:

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and SVT (Sweden), with AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism (South Africa), Amphora Media (Malta), Berlingske (Denmark), Bird (Bulgaria), CBC/Radio-Canada (Canada), CIReN (Cyprus), Context.ro (Romania), Delfi (Estonia), Der Spiegel (Germany), Der Standard (Austria), Follow The Money (Netherlands), Infolibre (Spain), Investico (Netherlands), IRPIMedia (Italy), iFact (Georgia), Le Monde (France), Paper Trail Media (Germany), Qurium (Sweden), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Ukrainian service (Ukraine), Re:Baltica (Latvia), Reporter.lu (Luxembourg), Siena.lt (Latvia), Studio Monitori (Georgia), De Tijd (Belgium), The Guardian (U.K.), Times of Malta (Malta), The Governance Monitoring Center (Georgia), VG (Norway), YLE (Finland), and ZDF(Germany)