Apple News In Conversation He said yes to an IT job. He ended up enslaved in a scam compound.
Apr 2, 2026
Andy Greenberg, senior Wired reporter known for deep cybersecurity investigations, walks through a clandestine scam compound and the trove of materials smuggled out. He outlines how victims are recruited with fake IT jobs, trained to run pig-butchering crypto scams, and brutalized into compliance. He also shares the tense choices he faced while helping a source try to escape.
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Whistleblower Email From Inside A Scam Compound
- Andy Greenberg received an encrypted ProtonMail email from a source claiming to be trapped inside a crypto romance scam compound in the Golden Triangle.
- The sender used the pseudonym Red Bull and offered internal documents and real-time whistleblowing while still inside the compound.
Pig Butchering Explained And Its Scale
- Pig butchering is a long-term romance-based crypto scam that grooms victims over weeks or months before moving them onto fake trading platforms.
- Andy says it steals tens of billions of dollars a year from mostly Western victims and is the largest form of cybercrime in history.
Lured By A Fake IT Job Into The Golden Triangle
- Muhammad Muzahir (Red Bull) was lured from Kashmir with a fake IT job, had his passport taken, and was moved into the lawless Golden Triangle special economic zone in Laos.
- He discovered his role was to work 15–16 hour night shifts in a scam compound and was effectively trapped with no way to leave.