WIRED | It began with a message in WIRED technology journalist Andy Greenberg’s inbox, sent from a lawless stretch of Laos bordering Myanmar and Thailand. A computer engineer from India, who gave himself the code name Red Bull, was trapped far from home and forced to work 15-hour shifts, running romance scams to lure victims into fake crypto investments.

It evolved into daily communications, sharing what was happening in the compound and how the scams worked. Thousands of pages of documentation, scripts, screenshots of actual victim engagements, and hours of video from their conversations.

Red Bull been recruited to be an IT manager overseas, but when he arrived, his bosses took his passport, and he learned what he was really brought there to do. The romance scam process used fake Facebook profiles, AI deepfakes, hired models, ChatGPT, and carefully curated scripts designed to manipulate victims.

Red Bull had been collecting evidence of how the romance scams worked. He had documents, videos, screenshots, flowcharts, photos, spreadsheets — and, of course, his own personal experience. He’d contacted Indian and U.S. authorities, Interpol, and multiple news outlets. Greenberg was the only one who responded.

The message marked the start of an investigation exposing previously unseen inner workings of crypto scams and modern forced labor. Unlike the situation in some compounds, Red Bull had a phone and could move somewhat freely within the area where he worked. The bosses controlled workers through indentured servitude, debt — and violence. He was promised commissions but lost nearly everything in daily fines, usually for missing quotas.

After the first call with Red Bull, Greenberg called Operation Shamrock Founder Erin West for her input. “It’s all Chinese organized crime,” she explained. “They move into locations, and they literally take over.” Red Bull even had a fake Chinese ID.

Red Bull and Greenberg spoke daily. Red Bull would pretend he was talking to his uncle and use video to show the buildings where he worked and lived. He could have his phone everywhere but in the actual rooms where the scamming happened.

“I have never seen anything like the materials you showed me,” West told Greenberg. “It’s really creepy to be reading texts that are a leader sending out suggestions and inspiration about how to hit these goals, when in fact the goals are theft of money. People are disappearing. People are being beaten if they don’t meet their sales goals.”

Greenberg and his team share what they learned from analyzing the files Red Bull sent.