A whistleblower trapped inside a Southeast Asian pig butchering compound has given WIRED an unprecedented look inside the world's most lucrative cybercrime operation. Mohammad Muzahir leaked 4,200 pages of internal WhatsApp messages, training scripts, and operational documents from the Boshang compound in Laos' Golden Triangle - exposing how hundreds of thousands of forced laborers are coerced into running romance and cryptocurrency investment scams that steal tens of billions of dollars annually from victims worldwide.
The motivational message arrived just before 8am. "Every day brings a new opportunity - a chance to connect, to inspire, and to make a difference," wrote office manager Amani to his team on WhatsApp. But this wasn't your typical corporate pep talk. Amani's workers were running pig butchering scams from a compound in Northern Laos, eight hours into a 15-hour night shift, defrauding victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through fake romance and cryptocurrency investments.
Now, leaked documents obtained by WIRED from a whistleblower inside the operation reveal the disturbing reality of how these scam factories operate. Mohammad Muzahir, an Indian man trapped inside the Boshang compound, secretly recorded and shared three months of internal WhatsApp group chats - 4,200 pages that capture the hour-by-hour conversations between forced workers and their bosses.
"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 anti-scam organization Operation Shamrock and reviewed the leaked materials. Jacob Sims of Harvard University's Asia Center, who also examined the logs, described them as having an "Orwellian veneer of legitimacy."
The leaked chats expose a system of modern slavery disguised as corporate employment. Workers like Muzahir were lured with fake job offers, had their passports confiscated, and were told they needed to pay $5,400 to buy out their "contract" and leave. In reality, their meager $500 monthly salary was systematically decimated through an elaborate fine system.
