Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, this is Brian. We're taking a break from our roundtable this week, but we didn't want to leave you empty handed. So we're sharing one of our favorite stories that we featured on the show, an investigation into a whistleblower trapped in a scam compound in Laos. I sat down with Wired's Andy Greenberg earlier this year to learn about it.
And trust me when I tell you that the twists and turns of this story will make your head spin. We hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 2: What is the investigation about a whistleblower in a scam compound?
I was, you know, having a normal Saturday on the roof with my kids. They were like playing in a kiddie pool.
Last summer, my colleague Andy Greenberg was enjoying an idyllic late afternoon in New York.
There had just been like a rainstorm. There was a rainbow. It was a very beautiful evening. And I, you know, in typical terrible 21st century parenting style, was ignoring my kids and looking at my phone and scrolling through messages. In the middle of mindlessly scrolling between apps... I've got this email. I found this email from...
Someone with a pseudonym who was messaging me from the encrypted email service ProtonMail. The email is from an unnamed source who claimed to be a computer engineer in Laos. A computer engineer trapped in a compound in the region of Laos who wanted to be a source, who wanted to be a whistleblower inside this crypto scam compound.
As a cybersecurity reporter, crypto scams are Andy's bread and butter. That's what he's constantly tracking down. Trends in hacking and cybercrime. But crypto scam compounds are a beast of their own. These are places where scam operations happen at an industrial scale.
And crypto scams have become the most profitable form of cybercrime in the world, pulling in tens of billions of dollars each year. Andy didn't know if this anonymous source was legit, but he followed up and told the source to message him through Signal. Later that evening, Andy received a flurry of messages.
they shared really detailed documents right off the bat, like an actual written report, a summary of everything they'd experienced and everything about the way that this scam compound worked, including this very, very detailed flow chart that included some elements that I had never heard of before.
These documents describe step by step the methods that this crypto compound uses to lure victims into their scams. From creating fake Facebook and Instagram profiles to using hired models and AI deepfake tools, all of it to create the illusion of a romantic prospect. Something they call pig butchering.
The idea of pig butchering is that these are crypto romance investment scams.
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Chapter 3: How do crypto scams operate at an industrial scale?
Oh, Red Bull? Red Bull? Okay, okay. And I later found out that he was looking at an empty can of Red Bull Energy drink on the table in front of him when he said that. He was so motivated as a source, so driven, that I was like kind of almost, you know, I was a little put off. I was...
wary of this person and I quickly kind of actually hung up and then called him back on a video call because I wanted to see who I was talking to and he picked up with no hesitation and showed me his face on the video call showed me around the hotel room he had actually managed to book a hotel room And I asked him to show me out the window, to walk outside the hotel.
It was nighttime my time, but it was daytime there. And he showed me the front of the hotel, which I could see that it was a Chinese language sign, that there were palm trees and that it looked like a kind of poor tropical area where everything was in Chinese. And like that certainly sounded like the Golden Triangle to me.
So, you know, I started to get what felt like confirmation very quickly that he was Chinese. who he said and that he really was in a scam compound and that he was in the Golden Triangle.
I think it's interesting, too. I think when you hear about people and about people enslaved in these compounds, you don't really necessarily think that they have that amount of mobility, the ability to go rent out a hotel room, walk around on the street, take video. But it's a little bit of a different... set up in terms of what's keeping them there. Is that fair to say?
You know, I was also surprised. Like I had read reports of these scam slavery compounds where people are held in shackles and beaten every day and electrocuted in some cases. And, you know, they're held almost like in the jungle and remote places. And the Golden Triangle compounds are not like that. In part because the Golden Triangle itself is almost like a mega compound.
The victims of these human trafficking operations, even if they walk around outside the building where they work or even the dormitory where they live, their passport has been taken away. The police have very often been paid off by the compound mafia. They can't really leave regardless. So they have a surprising freedom of movement because the whole place is essentially like a closed circuit.
a closed circuit where, as the source, Red Bull, described to Andy, they had a strict work schedule and punitive measures.
They were actually paid, in theory, a salary of like $500 a month or so in Chinese yuan. But then that money was taken from them almost entirely through fines for every tiny violation that their bosses could think of. They had access to a cafeteria where they were fed, but that food was withheld if they so much as showed up late to work or late to like lights out in the dormitory.
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Chapter 4: What is the concept of pig butchering in crypto scams?
He wanted to install spyware on his boss's computer. He wanted to set up a screen recording software on his work PC so that I could see what he was doing all day long. And, you know, I consulted with you about all these things and then many, you know, other experts. And everybody told me, you know, one by one, like, these are not good ideas. Like, this will get Red Bull killed.
And I took that very seriously. And we didn't do any of that. I talked him out of all of those ideas. And what we ultimately settled on was, you know, a much simpler solution. System that I still think actually turned out to be pretty effective, which was just that he installed a disguised version of Signal on his work PC.
A disguised version of Signal. Basically, Red Bull installed the app on his work computer with a different icon, making it look like it was a shortcut to his hard drive.
And then we would talk with disappearing messages set to like a very low time period so that the messages, there was not much of a log if we were ever caught. Andy and Red Bull also took up aliases. He would pretend that he was talking to his uncle. He would call me uncle from time to time, just in case, like, somebody spotted what he was doing.
Some of those aliases were a little more embarrassing than others. Eventually, we kind of upgraded our cover story to, like, me pretending to be his secret girlfriend. And we used a lot of, like, heart emojis, but that was a little too cringy, and we just couldn't keep it up. But the golden rule that stuck was how Andy and Red Bull would say hi to each other.
We created a protocol where, you know, when we started the conversation, the first person would say Red, the second person would say Bull, to make sure that his computer had not been seized.
As their communication got into a rhythm, Red Bull filled in a very detailed map of the inner workings of the scam compound operation.
He sent me photos of a whiteboard that showed a leaderboard of who had scammed the most that month. He sent me a spreadsheet that turned out to be a floor plan of the whole dormitory and all the different workers there. He sent me a picture of this big Chinese ceremonial drum that was played for scams of $100,000 or more.
And then like once in a while, he would then tell me to record my screen and turn on video on those calls. And then keep pretending to talk to his uncle as he walked around and videotaped.
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Chapter 5: How do scammers build trust with their victims?
And I recorded, you know, outside the compound, into the lobby of the office, sometimes into the cafeteria, and once into the actual work floor, the office itself, where I could see, you know, the whole layout of the office and even colored flags on different teams' desks to connote whether they had met their scam quota requirements. of revenue that month.
As the weeks passed by, the wall started to close in on Red Bull. His team leader started asking questions about why he wasn't generating enough new so-called clients, and then he threatened him with a beating. At this point, Andy consulted with me and the other editors at Wired. We decided that the safest thing was to stop the reporting process with Red Bull, at least until we knew he was safe.
I told Red Bull, like, let's stop. We've got to stop. You gave me enough. Thank you. Let's just wait and we'll speak again when you are free and you're home. Then we'll talk again. But when I said this to him, like that, we're done with our reporting process. He immediately in that conversation said, well, then I need to get out of here now. I'm going to find a way to escape.
For the full story of what happened to Red Bull and the crypto scam compound he was escaping from, you can head to wired.com. We promise it's worth your time. Thank you for listening.
This episode was produced by Adriana Tapia and Tyler Hill. It was edited by Kate Osborne. Amar Lal at Macrosound mixed this episode. Matt Giles and Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode. Mark Leda was our SF studio engineer. Pran Bandhi was our NY studio engineer. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And Katie Drummond is Wired's global editorial director. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative.
Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging.
Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real. Real. From PRX.
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