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Leaked chats expose the daily life of a scam compound's enslaved workforce
https://archive.is/mCEHR https://archive.is/mCEHR
- alwa 8mo agohttps://archive.is/mCEHR https://archive.is/mCEHR
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- lynx97 8mo ago[flagged]
- gscott 8mo agohttps://www.thestandard.com.hk/world-news/article/314372/Belarusian-Model-Killed-for-Organs-in-Myanmar-Scam-Compound-Over-Poor-Performance https://www.thestandard.com.hk/world-news/article/314372/Bel...
- Towaway69 8mo agoWhy aren’t the bosses identified via whatsapp? I thought that’s why various western countries require chat applications to allow decryption of private messages. These scam factories seem to be the perfect use case for all these anti-privacy regulations. Pity these operations are so profitable.
- DaedalusII 8mo agoin these countries simcards and cell phones are not so strictly linked to personal identity documents, so even if the chats are decrypted it is not very helpful
- Towaway69 8mo agoWhat about location? Wasn’t there a thing about whatsapp encryption leaking gps location or something? Really sad to see humans being able to be this nasty to each other. Technology being the enabler and enforcer, and also the means around detection. These scams are really a good excuse to force whatsapp to do something about their technology. Afterall they patented it (probably) so their own it and they should do their best to ensure it’s not abused.
- DaedalusII 8mo agomyanmar has had an ongoing civil war for decades so location is moot. there is no central authority that has the ability to deal with these things. the scam centres can get a lot of freedom just by supplying tinned food and petrol to whichever group they are closest to. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/4/4/hundreds-of-enslaved-fishermen-rescued-in-indonesia https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/4/4/hundreds-of-enslaved... one thing that is still happening is fishing fleets buy myanmar people and keep them as slaves on trawlers or in remote island prison camps there are 100+ formal languages in Myanmar, at least 100 unique ethnic groups, and over 150 armed combat groups. and the ethnic diversity is very abrupt, people living 30km away from each other can be so different they can't communicate with each other at all. foreign governments have almost zero influence on the ground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_armed_organisations_in_Myanmar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_armed_organisat... because the languages are so complex and dialect driven, they are often impossible to translate and monitor too.
- Towaway69 8mo agoAeon[1] just published a piece on the topic. It discusses the victim versus villain aspect. Having read that, it seems that the only remedy would be a Chinese government intervention (as it seems to be Chinese criminal gangs that run these facilities). That intervention might be triggered by the international image lose for the government in being associated with these scams. [1]: https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-criminal-world-of-southeast-asias-scam-compounds https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-criminal-world-of-southeas...
- netsharc 8mo agoJust because you talked to one (or many) who chose the job freely, doesn't mean the ones in SE Asia are the same... The captive ones do the scamming via text anyway, and they'd get beaten or worse if they don't do as wanted. "Just send some coded message", your incompassionate mind might say.. sadly not everyone is as wise as you, and it's hard to be so when they can cut your head and throw you into a river in a lawless part of the world.
- kdheiwns 8mo agoIt was reported in the very first paragraph of the article and in countless other articles the past few years: these people are kidnapped and kept as slaves. Nobody decided "yep, I want to get kidnapped during my relaxing trip to Thailand and be transported to the Laos/Myanmar border to be beaten half to death and take on call center work with the risk of being murdered should I refuse." Because that is what is happening. People who get kidnapped and refuse to work are being murdered. This isn't call center work. Some people may be doing this voluntarily around the world, but this article is specifically about people who are being held as literal slaves with zero chance of walking out alive on their own free will. And it's worsened by the fact the governments of Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (or what's left of their government), and Thailand are all complicit in this. It brings in big bucks, and there are reports of police even bringing people back to the compounds if they somehow escape.
- oefrha 8mo agoIt's really a spectrum. Some were kidnapped. Some knew part of the what they were getting into (they're there to scam people) but were lured by the promise of high salary, but later found out it wasn't what was promised and lost freedom. Some knew exactly what they were getting into, are voluntarily there, and even have personal freedom. Not every scam syndicate in the general area treat every scammer the same. It's often hard to tell who is in what category.
- DaedalusII 8mo agoI have to disagree on one point: Thailand is not complicit in this. They turn off parts of their grid and deploy their military at cost of life and limb to combat this. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-cut-power-myanmar-border-scam-centres-4915161 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-cut-power-myan...
- deaux 8mo agoCorrect, Thailand has taking meaningful steps. Unfortunately Musk's Starlink has proven a great alternative to supply these slavery centers with internet, despite it being widely known exactly where the centers are and trivial to block. But then it's hard to eexpect a company to care about human trafficking when it's run by "What day/night will be the wildest party on your human trafficking island, Jeff?".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- calcifer 8mo agoWell, let's just hope that if you get kidnapped, enslaved and forced into labour, someone will be kinder to you then you were to them.
- lynx97 8mo agoSo, what do you expect from that hypotheically kinder person? Should they let themselves be scammed by me, once I am kidnapped, enslaved and forced into labour?
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago> The more senior boss, who went by the name Da Hai Weird. In Wired's own graphic of the org chart, this person appears, but he's labeled "SEA" instead of "DA HAI".
- jtvjan 8mo agoIn the chart, it says 大海 (dàhǎi, lit. big sea) above "SEA", which means 'ocean'.
- thaumasiotes 8mo agoYes, I know, but the intended audience can't read 大海. The chart and the article are both created by Wired; it's strange for them to refer to him one way in the chart and another way in the article. I'm curious about the ethnic makeup of the "team leader" level. One of them is called "Ted", and seems to also be called 特德 ["te de"]. The 特德 could just be because everyone in the upper levels is Chinese, but the English-language post from Ted shown in the article doesn't really suggest a native English speaker. (And does suggest an emotional loyalty to China.) Amani doesn't sound like a Chinese name or like the English name of a Chinese person.
- bandrami 8mo ago"Amani" is an East African name
- walterbell 8mo agohttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/feds-seize-15-billion-from-alleged-forced-labor-scam-built-on-human-suffering/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/feds-seize-15-bi... > [US] Federal prosecutors have seized $15 billion from the alleged kingpin of an operation that used imprisoned laborers to trick unsuspecting people into making investments in phony funds, often after spending months faking romantic relationships with the victims. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-29/china-executes-online-scam-ring-leaders-from-myanmar/106284248 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-29/china-executes-online... > China has executed 11 people involved in criminal gangs in Myanmar, including online scam ringleaders. Their crimes included "intentional homicide, intentional injury, unlawful detention, fraud and casino establishment" https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3184205/why-china-was-so-keen-to-get-to-alleged-cybercrime-boss-chen-zhi-first https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3184205/why-china-was-so-k... > Chen's case might prove more complicated since the US had seized a large amount of his cryptocurrency assets, but he was now in custody in China.. "If China doesn't cooperate, it will be extremely difficult for the US to investigate Chen."
- giarc 8mo ago>seized $15 billion from the alleged kingpin I know the answer but why amass $15 billion, more money than a person could spend in a lifetime, and still conduct this scam? You think a person would say "enough" and escape to a beach somewhere.
- fragmede 8mo agoI'm not sure what to call the bias but the people who have done that we don't hear about so we're only hearing about the ones that don't do that. Who knows how many ruffians and scofflaws are out there on beaches, going unknown!
- giarc 8mo agoGood point - it's like the opposite of survivorship bias? We only hear about the ones that don't survive and get caught. The "survivors" we don't hear about all the criminals who are still at large I guess.
- gkanai 8mo agoChina executes 11 members of Myanmar scam mafia https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gdrvy9gjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gdrvy9gjo China executes four more Myanmar mafia members https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4e9eqz4rxo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4e9eqz4rxo
- v3ss0n 8mo agoThey are Ethnic Chinese who were operating scam centers in collaboration with junta at northern area Laukkai. There are more at shwe Koko area.
- simianwords 8mo agowere they Chinese citizens?
- sigwinch 8mo agoChina claims jurisdiction because 20 Chinese citizens were murdered, if that’s what you’re wondering.
- dmix 8mo agoThey are usually Chinese triad gangsters who operate scam businesses and illegal casinos in south east asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(organised_crime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(organised_crime)
- v3ss0n 8mo agoThey are Han Chinese, Most of those triad family come from Yunan borders a few decades ago. In Myanmar , thanks to military junta , they can easily buy citizenship by bribing authorities One of them is even a MP Senate in Military aligned party.
- master_crab 8mo agoThe BBC article is interesting: With these executions Beijing is sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers. But the business has now moved to Myanmar's border with Thailand, and to Cambodia and Laos, where China has much less influence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the UN. Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims who they swindle billions of dollars from are mainly Chinese too. Frustrated by the Myanmar military's refusal to stop the scam business, from which it was almost certainly profiting, Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance in Shan State in late 2023. The alliance captured significant territory from the military and overran Laukkaing, a key border town. China exercising profound influence over their near abroad.
- wtcactus 8mo ago[flagged]
- direwolf20 8mo agoIs there anything that capitalism did that is different from what it preaches?
- orwin 8mo agoNo, capitalism is about capital owners having control about what is produced and how it is produced, and we have exactly that, especially since Friedman "shareholder primacy" theory, which, at least to me, looks like the ultimate form of capitalism (capitalism != liberalism, which is about markets and exchange, not about production methods). Communist countries however are never about communal ownership of production method. I think there is reasons for that: communism is not only about production methods, but also about the "march of progress" and other philosophical theories that are more or less dumb (some are very effective analysis tools, some are very less so), and communist leaders pick and choose what they want from it.
- direwolf20 8mo agoWhy is capital owners controlling production desirable?
- kortilla 8mo agoBecause of incentive alignment. They are the only ones incentivized not to do something stupid with their own resources.
- dudefeliciano 8mo agoof course people are also resources in this framework, and "something stupid" could be providing insurance/healthcare/pension etc - unless a tyrannical (/s) government forces them to do otherwise
- bandris 8mo agoComplementary movie on this topic: "No More Bets" from 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets
- Epskampie 8mo agoHorrifying read. I recently read a book about a girl who was pressed into prostitution, and this reads much the same. [1] Before I was convinced that slavery was mostly a thing of the past, how awful to find out this isn't true. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515858-slave-girl https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515858-slave-girl
- PeterStuer 8mo agoWhy would a criminal organization that trafficked you into a place where you have no legal recourse ever stop exploiting you?
- cucumber3732842 8mo agoSame reason your government doesn't set taxes to 100%, has rules for themselves they at least sort of follow, and only treats people like shit when they've got a pretext. If they make it "too bad" then they'll have to piss away a whole lot more money on ensuring compliance, it'll threaten stability, etc. Slaves are the least motivated and least productive form of workers. Slaves who know they're slaves are worse still. Shooting for maximum extraction of labor doesn't actually get you the best ROI. Don't get me wrong, they'll still treat you like shit. But they maximize their "take home" by not going too far with it. I get that we all want to turn off our brains and hand wring because "criminals" or whatever but the dynamics of human organizations are unchanged regardless of what side of the law they're operating on.
- mapt 8mo agoSlavery was replaced by wage labor because it was more productive in the long run - that's part of the economists founding narrative. But I think they tend not to emphasize that it was also simply because it was a lot more flexible for a business in a competitive market to rent than to own, ceter paribus. Quasi-slave status persisted in many situations for a long time, being a local maxima for various management situations. Penal slaves in the postwar American South were in many cases treated worse than their chattel slave parents/grandparents partially because they were rented out by their owners, who didn't pay for them, to managers who rented and didn't have any stake in their survival.
- hereme888 8mo ago[flagged]
- boston_clone 8mo agoReal slavery, like what's permitted via the Thirteenth Amendment and propagated by over-policing black communities? Pretty sure the "American Left" is keenly aware of this, even if terminally-online armchair policy analysts engaging in whataboutisms aren't. This is kinda the whole crux of prison and police reform in the US; you may want to read "The New Jim Crow". Decent primer.
- simianwords 8mo agocomparing this to what happens in USA is why people don't take BLM and DEI seriously
- boston_clone 8mo agoOh, you don't have to out yourself like that; not here in public! Many people care about black lives and DEI. In fact, I'm willing to bet you probably agree with the most palatable form of DEI - jobs programs and hiring incentives for veterans. In any case, here's a quote FTA: >Rather than explicit imprisonment, the compound relied on a system of indentured servitude and debt to control its workers. Not that different from the USA: https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-inve...
- gmerc 8mo agoI guess if you're taking the Epstein thing as extra-territorial we could pretend this comment makes any sense.
- FatherOfCurses 8mo agoRace to the bottom, eh? Why talk about what the situation is in our country and try to improve it when other people in other countries have it much worse?
- thoi4o8094ijoi 8mo agoI wonder what kind of stories one'd hear from scam-centers in India.
- Havoc 8mo agoThey run the same corporate style operations. Management team, performance reviews etc all that jazz
- rainsil 8mo agoWe have quite a bit of insight into Indian scam centers thanks to the work of scambaiters like Jim Browning[1] who frequently hack into their CCTV cameras and desktops. The big difference is that the workers in India are voluntarily employed. In fact they often work for companies that do legitimate customer support as well, so they maintain the facade of doing “service” for their “clients”. It’s also worth noting that Indian call centers focus more on tech support scams rather than romance scams. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/JimBrowning https://www.youtube.com/JimBrowning
- Incipient 8mo agoI'm surprised anyone here expects these things not to be happening. The world outside of our (frankly small) 'western bubble' varies from pretty rough to absolutely horrific. I'm personally not too sure what anyone does about it. People left unchecked, to some degree, are awful.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> The world outside of our (frankly small) 'western bubble' varies Even within our "western bubble" horrible like these things continue being exposed, at least once every year. Sex trafficking rings, slavery and more seems a lot more prevelant than seemingly some people like to believe here, even in our "western bubble". One would think the whole Epstein affair that keeps growing would make people realize this, even more since there is still many individuals who are seemingly shielded for whatever reason. And that's what we know about, that they're "willing" to share, so imagine the ones who aren't as dumb and big as Epstein, they're still around and they're still in our "western bubble".
- tdb7893 8mo agoThere's sadly forced labor within the 'western bubble', too. My experience from working in tech is the bubble is mostly a small set upper middle class people. As a human it's not like you meet that many people so I think necessarily we have a very myopic view of how the world is. I mean hell, I often don't even know what people I see regularly are going through, there are people I talked to regularly that had severely abusive relationships or were going through a serious illness and it took a while for me to figure out.
- jezzamon 8mo agoWhile not as bad, MLM style companies share a lot of the same techniques as described in this article. Seems like a lot of them hold people primarily by indoctrination rather than actual force
- simianwords 8mo agoDoes Laos not have a functioning justice and enforcement system that the individuals trapped here could not just call them?
- pjc50 8mo agoThe catch-22 is that these people are nearly always immigrants, and the criminals have taken their documentation, so the best case scenario is they get rescued and then deported, possibly via a spell in immigration detention. The worst case scenario is the cops turn up, laugh, collect the day's bribe money and then the person who called the cops gets beaten. (this is an important dynamic in sex trafficking as well)
- JustSkyfall 8mo agoThe government is somewhat complicit - there are even reports that the police take escapees back to their captives for a bribe
- simianwords 8mo agothis is far bigger a problem and requires interventions from China and India. what good is it to just punish the people who ran the scam but not the country that supported it?
- eviks 8mo agoWhat you see is exactly how those systems function
- astura 8mo agoFrom TFA: >The relative leniency of Muzahir’s compound, says Harvard’s Sims, likely stems from scam operations’ sense of total control in Laos’ Golden Triangle region—a zone of the country controlled largely by Chinese business interests that has become a host to crimes ranging from narcotics and organ sales to illegal wildlife trafficking. Even human trafficking victims who escape from a compound there, Sims points out, 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.”
- andrepd 8mo agoThat's why those "scammer gets owned" videos made by douche youtubers, full of people gloating in the comments about how superior they are, never sat right with me. Those people crammed into warehouses are obviously extremely desperate or coerced or both.
- scns 8mo agoThere is quite a difference between indians going to "work" in a shiny building in the business district and native chinese held captive in Myanmar and forced to scam people in China.
- jrmg 8mo agoDon’t like that you’re being downvoted. I’ve always felt the same.
- gambiting 8mo agoI don't - it's the same as people defending thieves and burglars because "they are just people and they have families to feed". I've had shit stolen from my house before and the emotional damage this causes is far greater than anything financial - to me, thieves could be shot on the spot, literally zero sympathy towards them, they are only one spot below actual murderers and rapists in my book. These guys are the same - do I feel bad for their plight? Yes, for sure, I wish we could help them and make sure they can live their lives free and not in what is effectively slavery. But they are currently "employed" destroying peoples lives, so many examples of people losing their lives savings to these scammers, many commit suicide due to this. Fucking around with them for youtube videos is the least we can do.
- commandersaki 8mo agoYou understand the front line of the pig butchering scam don't have agency, yet you call them thieves and burglars. They're not the ones doing it, it is those who control them. Having said that, I neither agree or disagree whether youtube videos should gloat about how they've wasted their time or whatever. I think we need to make it practically impossible to run the scam by having social media / messaging operators shutdown fraudulent accounts, especially if reported.
- dudefeliciano 8mo agoA while back I thought I could make a bit of extra cash by playing along with these scams, apparently they give returns on the first/second round of investment and only run off with the money once the sum is large enough for them. Knowing that someone may get beaten or worse for losing money prevented me from going through with it
- Havoc 8mo agoThe returns show are general on app/paper only not something you can actually withdraw
- dudefeliciano 8mo agoThat makes sense to me and is what I would expect. I have seen accounts where people were in fact allowed to withdraw their small initial gains (although i can not confirm that was the case, maybe they were just trying to save face) that's what gave me the idea to scam the scammers in the first place.
- nsvd2 8mo agoThey would likely allow you to withdraw some returns but not the principle.
- eli_gottlieb 8mo agoTrying to scam the scammers is one of the world's oldest ways of getting scammed.
- skeptic_ai 8mo agoThey sent me to my usdt wallet. So i actually got it. Of course after I earned 30 USD they make it impossible to withdraw unless I “invested” 100 usd. Very weird scam to pay out 30usd. So means 1 in 3 people must invest 100 in order for them to breakeven, which tbh doesn’t make sense. Also note that came from a random telegram account from dubai. They asked if I wanted to make money etc. I obviously thought was a scam. I never expected to really cash out the 30 USD.
- CGMthrowaway 8mo agoIs there an archive link somewhere? All I see is a 21 minute podcast I can't listen to without a sub, and a single paragraph of copy.
- flancian 8mo agoFound this archive link: https://archive.is/2026.02.02-090119/https://www.wired.com/story/the-red-bull-leaks/ https://archive.is/2026.02.02-090119/https://www.wired.com/s...
- e40 8mo agoI have noticed a dramatic decline in human scam calls and a commensurate increase in ai calls.
- LoveMortuus 8mo agoI wouldn't say I'm enslaved, would be unfair. That being said, I live in a room rented to me by the company that hires me, I work for a customer service center, so it's not a construction situation. The reason the company rents us rooms is because we're not paid enough to afford normal rent. All this means that if there's ever a ramp down, I'd be immediately jobless and homeless, which does not feel good at all...
- nemomarx 8mo agoIf you added on top being in a foreign country and needing your employer for your visa, I think you'd basically have the same situation as the article? So that's a little precarious. I hope you have some savings built up.
- LoveMortuus 8mo agoI'm putting all of my money into Quanloop (something like a P2P lending thingy) in hopes of growing the interest income to at least 1000€ per month. Theoretically I should be able to reach that point in about 7 years, with the APY of ~15.6%, my goal is 80,000€.
- fskdsdfgvhjk 8mo ago[dead]
- LoveMortuus 8mo agoHow quickly things change... Today as I was riding to work, I got hit by a car and then to add icing on the cake, the company told me that they're not going to extend my contract... I've got about three weeks to find an apartment or at least a room and a whole new job...
- RankingMember 8mo agoA situation like you describe is ripe for abuse. H1Bs here deal with similar precariousness, though not on the level of what it sounds like you're dealing with. I hope your situation improves and you gain some security.
- RandyOrion 8mo agoA related paper interviewing victims of the pig-butchering scams. “Hello, is this Anna?": Unpacking the Lifecycle of Pig-Butchering Scams [1] [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20821 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20821
- litoE 8mo agoI have been getting repeated emails saying something along the lines of "We have a family office who has a strong interest in making an investment into <MY_COMPANY_NAME> industry. Can we set up a time to discuss this opportunity?". They are signed with different names, always female, and coming from email addresses with a TLD of .help or .shop It's obviously a scam and I am not replying, but I'm curious what the scam is here.
- captn3m0 8mo agoThe investment is blocked till you transfer a fee to process it.
- Towaway69 8mo ago> 'Mass exodus' from Cambodian scam compounds a 'humanitarian crisis' https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-03/mass-exodus-from-cambodian-scam-compounds/106282530 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-03/mass-exodus-from-camb...