Exposed: Inside the Modern Slavery Operation Running Global Pig Butchering Scams
One April morning, just minutes before 8 a.m., an operations manager calling himself Amani shared a motivational pep talk with his team and junior staff in their company-wide WhatsApp group. “Every day brings a new opportunity—a chance to connect, to inspire, and to make a difference,” he wrote in his 500-word note. “Talk to that next customer like you're bringing them something valuable—because you are.”
Amani wasn’t hyping up an ordinary corporate sales team. He and everyone who reported to him worked inside a “pig butchering” scam compound: a coordinated criminal enterprise that runs romance and crypto investment fraud, often stealing hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars from a single victim.
The workers Amani was addressing were already eight hours into a 15-hour overnight shift in a high-rise building in Laos’ northern Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. Like the people they target, most of these scammers are victims themselves: trapped inside the compound as forced laborers, held in debt bondage with their passports confiscated. They are forced to hit strict scam revenue targets to avoid fines that only push them deeper into debt. Rule-breakers and anyone who tries to escape face far harsher retribution: beatings, torture, even death.
The bizarre, unsettling daily reality of one of these Southeast Asian scam compounds—its tactics, its tone, its odd mix of unflinching cruelty and upbeat corporate jargon—has been revealed in unprecedented detail in a trove of leaked documents shared with WIRED by a whistleblower trapped inside the sprawling Boshang compound facility. Boshang is one of dozens of scam operations across Southeast Asia that have enslaved hundreds of thousands of people. Most of these captive workers are lured from the poorest regions of Asia and Africa with fake job offers, then turned into cogs in the world’s most lucrative cybercrime machine, forced to steal tens of billions of dollars total from victims globally.
Last June, one of these forced laborers, an Indian man named Mohammad Muzahir, reached out to WIRED while he was still being held captive in the compound that had trapped him. Over the following weeks, Muzahir—who initially only identified himself as “Red Bull”—shared a massive cache of information about the operation. His leaks included internal company documents, pre-written scam scripts, employee training guides, operational flowcharts, and dozens of photos and videos taken inside the compound walls.
Of all the materials Muzahir leaked, the most illuminating is a set of screen recordings capturing three full months of the compound’s internal WhatsApp group chats. WIRED converted these recordings into 4,200 pages of screenshots, which document hour-by-hour conversations between the compound’s workers and their leadership, laying bare the toxic, nightmarish workplace culture of a large-scale pig butchering operation.
“It’s a slave colony that’s trying to pretend it’s a legitimate company,” says Erin West, a former Santa Clara County, California, prosecutor who leads the anti-scam organization Operation Shamrock, and who reviewed the chat logs obtained by WIRED. Jacob Sims, a researcher at Harvard University’s Asia Center who also reviewed the leaked logs, described the operation’s “Orwellian veneer of legitimacy.”
“It’s terrifying, because it’s a combination of manipulation and coercion,” says Sims, who studies Southeast Asian scam compounds. “Combining those two things pushes people to perform at the highest levels, and it’s one of the core reasons these operations are so profitable.”
Just hours after Amani’s saccharine pep talk, a more senior boss chimed in with a stark warning: “Don't resist the company's rules and regulations,” he wrote. “Otherwise you can't survive here.” Staff responded with 26 emoji reactions—all thumbs-ups and salutes.
Fined Into Slavery
WIRED’s analysis of the 11 weeks of chat records shows more than 30 of the compound’s workers successfully defrauded at least one victim during that period, stealing a total of roughly $2.2 million. Even so, the compound’s leaders repeatedly expressed disappointment with the team’s performance, berated staff for lacking effort, and levied fine after fine against underperforming workers.
Rather than overt physical imprisonment, the compound relies on a system of indentured servitude and debt bondage to control its workforce. As Muzahir explained, he was promised a base salary of 3,500 Chinese yuan a month (around $500), which in theory required 75 hours of overnight shifts per week, including meal breaks. Though his passport had been seized, he was told he could get it back and be allowed to leave if he paid off his “contract” with a one-time $5,400 payment.
In practice, WhatsApp chats reveal that nearly all of even that meager salary is erased by constant fines. One group message warns that any worker who fails to initiate a “first chat”—an introductory conversation with a scam target—on any given day will be fined 50 yuan, and their failure will be announced to the entire team. Falsifying a progress report costs 1,000 yuan. Falling asleep on shift, “watching unrelated videos, chatting with friends, and any activity that is not related to the job” each carry a 200 yuan fine, as does any “disturbance” in the dormitory, where workers sleep five or six to a room in shared bunk beds.
One entry notes a 500 yuan fine for a worker who slept in, while another worker was fined 200 yuan for not being back in the dorm by curfew after his shift ended. Refuse to sign a form admitting your misconduct to avoid the fine, and the penalty is automatically doubled.
Muzahir himself says he was fined so frequently that he was left virtually penniless. Chats also confirm that access to the office cafeteria is often revoked as punishment, with workers’ ID badges that grant canteen access sometimes seized for seven days over small infractions like arriving late to shift. Even the right to bring personal snacks and drinks (other than the stimulant betel nut) can be revoked if a worker underperforms. Time off is almost unheard of, with staff sometimes forced to work seven consecutive nights a week, Muzahir says.
Bosses repeatedly promise that these punishments can be avoided if a worker successfully scams a victim—or “opens a customer,” as leaders euphemistically call pulling off a successful fraud against a new target. Scamming the same victim for additional money is called a “recharge.” In theory, workers earn a commission on top of their base salary for every successful scam they pull off. But Muzahir says he successfully ran two scams during his months in the compound—both of which left him wracked with guilt—and he was never paid for either.
Even so, bosses exploit workers’ false hope of paying off their debt—or even leaving the compound rich—to motivate performance. “I understand—when penalties or fines come your way, it's easy to feel disheartened. But I urge you not to see it as a punishment, but as a lesson and an investment in your own growth,” Amani wrote. “Don't fear the fine. Let it fuel your fire.”
A more senior boss who went by the name Da Hai laid out the classic carrot-and-stick approach even more clearly: “The company's incentives are much higher than the fines, so as long as you work hard to open new customers you will receive a generous reward!” he wrote.
One favorite management tactic is pitting teams against one another: reprimanding underperforming workers while highlighting the success of other scammers in the compound. Every office room was outfitted with a traditional Chinese ceremonial drum, which is beaten whenever a worker successfully scams a victim out of a six-figure sum.
“Do you know why the next office is beating drums?” a senior boss named Alang wrote to the group.
A victim had just paid “480k,” another boss named Libo replied.
“It doesn't matter, because he belongs to others,” Alang responded. “The important thing is, which one of you can play the drum?”
Under the Pretense, a Brutal Reality
Beyond these manipulative corporate-style tactics, the chats occasionally let slip glimpses of the far harsher reality lurking underneath the surface—something Muzahir’s own personal experience and testimony confirms. Muzahir says he heard repeated stories of tortured workers, and he was personally threatened by Amani with beatings and electrocution if he failed to find new “clients.” Sometimes, coworkers would disappear without any explanation.
Eventually, Muzahir hatched a plan to trick his captors into letting him leave. When bosses figured out his ruse, he was locked in a room, beaten, slapped and kicked, denied food and water, and forced to drink a solution with an unknown white powder dissolved in it—apparently intended to make him more compliant during interrogation.
Occasional messages in the chat logs hint that these brutal punishments and human rights abuses are common, hidden just below the surface of the compound’s motivational corporate messaging. At one point, the boss Alang mentions a young woman who “sneaked away from the company and went to work in a brothel,” and another group member notes that the “company” still holds her passport. Among captive workers, Muzahir says, rumors spread that the woman was actually sold into sex trafficking—a practice that has been well-documented in other accounts from scam compound survivors.
At another point, while berating the group for poor performance, the boss Da Hai hinted at the large sum of money workers need to generate before they can ever hope to leave the compound. “You continue to violate the company's regulations,” he wrote to the group. “If you continue like this, please prepare your compensation and get out of here.”
Harvard’s Sims says references to paying “compensation” for release are actually “coded language for ransom and debt bondage.” Laos, Sims points out, is a signatory to the Palermo Protocol, which classifies any person held in debt, forced to work, and denied freedom of movement as a victim of human trafficking. “There is no gray area here,” he says.
A Day in the Life of a Scammer
The leaked WhatsApp chats include a strict work schedule shared by a boss named Terry for his team. “Obey and respect the working time,” the message reads. Each shift starts around 11:30 p.m. Beijing time—10:30 p.m. local time in Laos—with workers ordered to arrive a few minutes early. Before the shift ends at 2 p.m. Beijing time, workers get two breaks, one set aside for meals. By 5 p.m., all workers must be back in their dormitories and “sleep or keep silence, no disturbing the others.” Violations lead to fines and can result in ID badges being revoked.
The overnight schedule is intentional: it aligns with the waking hours of victims in the U.S., who in this operation are almost exclusively Indian-American men. It is standard industry practice for scammers to target victims of their own shared ethnicity, to eliminate language and cultural barriers that could blow their cover.
In a grim contrast to their actual lives, all staffers are required to post a fake daily schedule for the personas they impersonate: wealthy, attractive women who build romantic connections with targets. In hour-by-hour breakdowns, the fake schedules describe mornings spent meditating, doing yoga, going for walks, and “setting positive intentions” for the day. Other activities include a “relaxed” lunch with coworkers, dinner with family, and time at the gym—when in reality, the scammers are spending entire overnight shifts glued to a screen in a fluorescent-lit office.
Even so, many scammers were reprimanded for not sticking to the script while interacting with targets. “The purpose of editing a daily plan is to let everyone know clearly what you are going to share with your clients today when you start working,” one boss complained. “I find that many people just do it to get the job done and don't apply your plan to your clients.”
Every workday, forced scammers are required—under threat of additional fines—to submit detailed progress reports to their bosses. The WhatsApp logs are filled with page after page of identical template reports from every team member, listing their team, their name, and recent activity from their fake profiles. They report how many active social media accounts they run, if any accounts have been suspended, how many chats they have started, how many are ongoing, any successful scams, and their monthly target. Internal chats also show scammers sharing screenshots of their conversations with victims on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, and other apps, while asking leaders for advice on how to proceed with specific targets.
Bosses regularly give specific, pointed feedback on how scammers should shape the narrative of their fraud. “When sharing travel topics, you need to know how to share details,” one chat advises. Another message from a boss warns workers not to mention the car their fake persona drives if they cannot provide a convincing photo of it. Managers keep close watch on all activity: on multiple occasions, bosses forced workers to connect their WhatsApp accounts to managers’ personal computers so they could monitor conversations with victims directly.
Anatomy of a Scam
The 25 scam scripts and training guides Muzahir shared with WIRED also offer a detailed look at how the compound trains its workers and what tactics they use. Most of the documents cover the granular details of running cryptocurrency investment scams, including how to build an emotional connection with a target that can be shifted into an investment proposal, how to explain cryptocurrency to skeptical victims, and what steps to take once a target agrees to invest.
One document lists “100 chat topics” designed to build the emotional intimacy required for a romance scam, including questions like “What was your dream when you were little?” and “What was the last time you cried?” Another script suggests scammers share an update about getting into a minor car accident to spark sympathy: “On my way to work in the morning, my car was hit by a car following at a traffic light, which almost delayed my meeting in the morning. Thank you for your concern. I am fine.”
Multiple documents guide scammers to pretend they are already investing in crypto, then frame banks as unfair for blocking customers from converting their money into cryptocurrency: “If we transfer or withdraw funds, they will have one less customer,” one proposed script reads. “If everyone does this, then the bank will be in crisis and there will be a situation of capital rupture. I can understand their motives, but as a bank customer, I should not be hindered from transferring assets reasonably and legally. This is what makes me angry.”
The documents also outline a tactic researchers say is widely used in Southeast Asian romance and investment scams: attackers intentionally bring up the topic of scams—even directly discussing the threat of investment fraud—to inoculate themselves against suspicion. The logic goes that if a person is willing to talk openly about scams, instead of avoiding the topic or acting suspicious, they can’t possibly be a scammer themselves.
This strategy even extends to preparing victims to ignore anti-fraud warnings from their bank or law enforcement that pop up when they try to transfer large amounts of traditional currency into cryptocurrency. “I was going to transfer funds to my coinbase today, but I was deliberately delayed and obstructed by the bank staff,” one script reads, referring to the popular crypto wallet service Coinbase. “I also received an anti-fraud call from the FBI today, which wasted a lot of my time.”
The materials Muzahir provided from the Boshang compound also document the central role generative AI tools play in these modern deceptions. Muzahir told WIRED that compound workers are trained to use tools like ChatGPT and Deepseek to generate responses to victims and craft natural-sounding dialogue. Even more critical is the compound’s use of deepfake AI software, which lets scammers convincingly join video calls with victims who request them, using an AI-generated face to impersonate the fake persona whose photos the scammer has stolen.
Internal chat logs captured by Muzahir describe a dedicated “AI room” where a female model conducts face-swapped calls on demand for an endless stream of victims. One WhatsApp message from a boss to the group chat notes that “Sana (our model who helps us to call) is not available tonight. she is not feeling well. Therefore, don't promise your customers to call them. Maybe she will come at work in the morning. Plan your work accordin[g]ly.”
Other chats about the AI room focus on scheduling challenges, given high demand for face-swapped calls and the fact that a single model can only handle one deepfake call at a time. For example, one chat notes: “If there is a ‘busy’ sign on her door, change it to ‘free’ when you come out, so as to avoid crowding and frequent door openings.”
The scripts Muzahir shared also include tips for delaying a video chat with a victim—often until the scammer can arrange access to the AI room for a deepfake call. “When we meet, it will not be awkward but rather we will look forward to it,” one script advises scammers to say when a victim asks for a video chat. It continues, “We are strengthening our relationship every day. You have also seen my photos. When we meet, can you recognize me?”
Beyond the Golden Triangle
As dystopian as the Golden Triangle compound described in the leaked documents is, its work environment is actually relatively lenient compared to many scam compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar. In those facilities, says Operation Shamrock’s Erin West, she has heard firsthand accounts of workers being beaten simply for missing their scam quotas, or forced to work 18-hour shifts on their feet, with none of the pretense of legitimate voluntary corporate work.
Harvard’s Sims says the relative leniency of Muzahir’s compound likely stems from the total control scam operators have in Laos’ Golden Triangle region: an area largely controlled by Chinese business interests that has become a hub for crimes ranging from narcotics and organ trafficking to illegal wildlife trade. Even if a human trafficking victim escapes from a compound there, Sims points out, they can be tracked down relatively easily thanks to Chinese organized crime’s influence over local law enforcement. “These guys don’t have to be held in a cell,” Sims says. “The whole place is a closed circuit.”
Even so, the Boshang compound that held Muzahir moved from the Golden Triangle to Cambodia in late 2023, according to messages Muzahir received from his former coworkers. He has confirmed that the operation and its captive workforce are now based in the town of Chrey Thom, which both Sims and West describe as a fast-growing hot spot for scam operations.
Sims speculates the move was triggered by a wave of police raids on scam compounds across the region around that time. Many of these raids, he says, amount to nothing more than a “performative crackdown.” One such raid in June targeted the building that previously housed Muzahir’s compound, but Muzahir says the workers rounded up by police were quickly released and sent back to work. Even so, the disruption of these superficial crackdowns was enough of a nuisance to push the operation’s leaders to relocate to Cambodia.
In that country, even the family of Prime Minister Hun Manet has
Exposed: Inside the Modern Slavery Operation Running Global Pig Butchering Scams
