Picture this: Brooklyn rooftop, summer rain clearing, rainbow over the skyline, kids splashing in a pool. A journalist is scrolling on his phone (paywall link) when an email arrives from hell.
“I am a computer engineer being forced to work here. I want to help shut this down.”
Eight thousand miles away, in a concrete compound deep in Laos’ Golden Triangle, a 23-year-old bet his life on a total stranger.
🎭 He got conned
Mohammad Muzahir grew up in Kashmir, the eighth of eight children. He walked 6 miles to school each day, shoes worn through, a rope for a belt. He taught himself computers on a $200 secondhand laptop, the most precious thing he’d ever owned.
When a friend of a friend mentioned a great IT job in Laos paying $1,700 a month, Mohammad saw his ticket out. The interview went fine, he got the position and then his bosses revealed his real job: scammer.
His passport vanished. He was imprisoned in a compound with other human trafficking victims. Mohammad worked 15-hour shifts running “pig butchering” romance scams using AI deepfakes to pose as wealthy women, convincing lonely Americans to invest on fraudulent crypto platforms.
A gong in the office rang whenever someone stole over $100,000.
Victims sent desperate messages: “I’ve always dreamed of having a girlfriend like you.” “Please help me get my money back.” One man sent a video of himself sobbing after losing six figures. The office passed it around as a joke.
🔥 40 days in scam hell
Mohammad knew computers better than his bosses did. For 40 days, he played spy, code-naming himself Red Bull, disguising secret Signal calls as chats with victims, making hidden recordings, gathering 4,200 pages of evidence.
But his hands weren’t clean. Under threat of beatings, Mohammad scammed people, real people with real lives. He stole $504 from one, $11,000 from another.
Then he forged a police summons to trick his way out. His captors caught him. Four days of hell: beaten, starved, forced to drink drugged water. If Mohammad could come up with $2,800, they’d let him go.
No one paid. The Wired journalist couldn’t, ethics forbade it. Human rights groups suspected it was all a scam. The Indian Embassy went radio silent.
😨 Mohammad made himself worthless
He begged, argued he was deadweight. Finally, they drove him to the border and dumped him in flip-flops, because they wouldn’t let him grab his shoes.
Hidden on his cracked phone: 10 GB of damning files.
Today, Mohammad’s back in India, working construction, barely sleeping. He’s haunted by the colleagues still trapped and by the people he robbed.
When the journalist finally met him, Mohammad stepped out of a white SUV in a flannel shirt, smiling shyly. “If someone sees my story,” he said, “maybe more Red Bulls will step forward.”
Mohammad had no money, no rescue team, no government coming to save him. He got out anyway. And he wants you to know there are thousands like him, people working right now to steal from you, not because they want to but because the alternative is being beaten, drugged, raped or killed.
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