Andy Greenberg

And that process is incredibly effective, it turns out.

And only after weeks or months of that fattening up romantic process is the pig butchered.

a human trafficking operation that essentially enslaves people, tricks them into coming to this kind of compound, turns them into forced laborers, traps them there, and forces them to scam people for sometimes 15, 16-hour shifts.

On one side, it's taking people's entire life savings, very often hundreds of thousands or even over a million dollars from victims in a single scam.

But then on the other side, there are hundreds of thousands of enslaved people whose lives have been completely ruined as they're trapped in these compounds.

The Golden Triangle, I've always heard about it as this kind of like vague region at the intersection of the borders of Laos and Myanmar and Thailand.

It has been carved out as this special economic zone that is a kind of almost in an official sense, not controlled by Laos, but instead controlled by Chinese business interests.

It is essentially run by Chinese, both business people and very often Chinese organized criminal syndicates.

This very small area, just like half the size of Washington, D.C.

or something, it is now a hub for all sorts of transnational crime.

And crypto scam compounds may in fact be the biggest and most lucrative form of those.

This was somebody who had been trapped like this and wanted to expose everything he could about the operation.

Hello.

Hello.

How are you?

Good.

Good.

Thank you for being willing to talk.

I picked up the phone, and I'm talking to this young, very polite man with an Indian accent.

What is your name, or what can I call you?