A whistleblower trapped inside a “pig butchering” scam compound gave WIRED a vast trove of its internal materials—including 4,200 pages of messages that lay out its operations in unprecedented detail.
Just before 8am one day last April, an office manager who went by the name Amani sent out a motivational message to his colleagues and subordinates. “Every day brings a new opportunity—a chance to connect, to inspire, and to make a difference,” he wrote in his 500-word post to an office-wide WhatsApp group. “Talk to that next customer like you’re bringing them something valuable—because you are.”
Amani wasn’t rallying a typical corporate sales team. He and his underlings worked inside a “pig butchering” compound, a criminal operation built to carry out scams—promising romance and riches from crypto investments—that often defraud victims out of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars at a time. The workers were eight hours into their 15-hour night shift in a high-rise in the Golden Triangle special economic zone in Northern Laos. Like their marks, most of them were victims too: forced laborers trapped in the compound, held in debt bondage with no passports.
“It’s a slave colony that’s trying to pretend it’s a company,” says Erin West, a former Santa Clara County prosecutor who leads an anti-scam organization called Operation Shamrock and who reviewed the chat logs obtained by WIRED.