He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive

So I promised myself whether I stay alive or not,

but I stop this scam.

If they know if they, if they catch me,

they kill me.

You are watching never-before-seen footage

secretly filmed inside a crypto scam compound

in a lawless stretch of Laos bordering Myanmar and Thailand.

It was sent to me by a source who contacted me last year

and initially identified himself only as Red Bull.

He said he was a computer engineer from India

trapped inside the compound and forced to work

as a scammer targeting western victims with texts

that lure them into fake crypto investments.

Part of a scam industry that often defrauds victims

out of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

This form of scam known as pig butchering

is now the most lucrative form of cyber crime in the world.

It's dominated by Chinese syndicates

who run these scam compounds in Southeast Asia.

The workers in those compounds are victims too.

They're trapped in a cruel system of human trafficking.

Their passports are taken from them.

They're forced to work 15 hour night shifts,

synced to the U.S. daytime hours of their scam targets.

Red Bull wanted to escape, but not before he had exposed

his captor's secrets.

Over the weeks that followed,

he sent me detailed descriptions

of the compound's inner workings,

its use of cryptocurrency and AI deep fake tools,

it's scam scripts and guides,

and sometimes even secretly recorded videos

inside the compounds offices and cafeteria.

The most revelatory pieces of evidence Red Bull shared

were screen recordings of his phone.

As he scrolled through months

of the compound's internal WhatsApp chats.

We at WIRED converted these 10 gigabytes of video

into 4,200 pages of screenshots.

Together, they offer an unprecedented level of detail

into the scam compound's daily operations,

its org chart, its tactics for coercing and manipulating

the human trafficking victims working there.

Red Bull's leaks to WIRED were never discovered

by his bosses, but when he attempted to make his escape,

his story took a dark turn.

He was caught, put in a room, beaten,

and deprived of food and water.

For weeks, he was held captive in the compound

as his health deteriorated.

Only when in another twist,

the compound had to move its operations

to evade an impending police raid

would Red Bull seize an opportunity to get home.

You can read WIRED's full story

of Red Bull's incredible work as a whistleblower,

our analysis of the trove of evidence he shared,

and the details of his ordeal inside the compound,

and how he finally got free at WIRED.com.