"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.""
"The workers Amani was addressing were eight hours into their 15-hour night shift in a high-rise building 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. They struggled to meet scam revenue quotas to avoid fines that deepened their debt. Anyone who broke rules or attempted to escape faced far worse consequences: beatings, torture, even death."
"The bizarre reality of daily life in a Southeast Asian scam compound-the tactics, the tone, the mix of cruelty and upbeat corporate prattle-is revealed at an unprecedented level of resolution in a leak of documents to WIRED from a whistleblower inside one such sprawling fraud operation. The facility, known as the Boshang compound, is one of dozens of scam operations across Southeast Asia that have enslaved hundreds of thousands of people. Often lured from the poorest regions of Asia and Africa with fake job offers,"
A whistleblower inside a pig-butchering scam compound provided thousands of internal messages and documents, including 4,200 pages, revealing operations in unprecedented detail. The facility, called the Boshang compound in the Golden Triangle special economic zone in Northern Laos, ran long night shifts where workers—many of whom were trafficked and held in debt bondage without passports—were forced to meet scam revenue quotas. The scams combined romance and crypto-investment pitches that defrauded victims of large sums. Management used upbeat corporate messaging alongside fines, beatings, torture, and threats of death to enforce compliance and deepen victims' debts.
Read at WIRED
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