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“When we walked into the office, a guy would shout slogans into a microphone: ‘Happy work, happy making money, happy going home,’ three times. And then we’d start working,” says Mohammad Muzahir, a 23-year-old Indian man. Sometimes the pep talk would include getting everyone pumped up with Queen’s We Will Rock You. Then they’d go sit at their computers with one goal in mind: to scam wealthy Westerners.

The office was in Laos and run by a Chinese mafia group. Muzahir, a computer programmer by training, ended up there kidnapped without his passport through a fake job offer. For months, he kept quiet while secretly gathering information to expose the entire operation to a journalist from Wired magazine.

From unassuming offices in the Golden Triangle, formed by the border regions of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, billions of dollars are stolen from Westerners through romance and cryptocurrency scams. Artificial intelligence facilitates the entire process, acting as an assistant, providing translations, deepfakes for calls, and suggestions on how to continue conversations, strike the right emotional tone, and find new victims.

“ChatGPT, give me common surnames of people who speak Spanish in the U.S.,” is an example of their use of AI, which Muzahir explains to EL PAIS using the Signal messaging app. They would then search for those surnames in specific cities on Facebook. Dozens of users would show up, and the scammers would start sending messages: “They usually use greetings to attract victims in the first chat, like ‘good morning.’ If someone has posts on Facebook or Instagram, they might say, ‘Hi, I saw photos on your profile. Can you tell me where this place is? You look very pretty in this photo,’ and that’s how the conversation starts,” he explains.

Even though AI now assists scammers with everything, at the core, it’s still human and “artisanal” work. Muzahir had about a hundred other forced laborers working alongside him. He was required to contact at least 100 people a day. That’s 10,000 contacts daily from that office alone. It was an army of fraud, and it wasn’t the only one. In September, China executed 11 members of a gang that operated from Myanmar and ran hundreds of compounds dedicated to online fraud, prostitution and drug production. Enslaved workers like Muzahir were killed if they tried to escape. Muzahir, who was held captive but eventually released without any luggage or belongings, still fears they’ll catch up with him in India: “I’m not afraid of them, but I’m sure they’ll try to hurt me. It’s not just one person; there are many mafia groups around the world.”

In early February, Reuters visited one of these offices, abandoned due to a border conflict between Thailand and Myanmar: “Among the documents there were profiles of a 73-year-old Japanese retiree, with his phone number and bank balance, and scripts for carrying out romance scams and even impersonating the police,” the agency notes.

The thousands of documents and screenshots Muzahir smuggled out of the office reveal the well-trodden path of online fraud. “From the first to the fourth day,” reads the title of a piece of paper hanging in his office. “The first chat is to get to know each other. We need to get to know each other and assess the client in a trusting environment. We have to try to see if they have money by looking at their job, age, family situation, hobbies, and interests. To achieve our goal, we have to find an excuse to leave,” which could be a meeting or a bathroom break. But, the document warns, “you always have to tell them it was a pleasure and that you want to talk again tomorrow.”

Talk about your passive income

The pressure of the ultimate goal is always present, as reflected in the documentation Muzahir obtained: “Tell them something that resonates, so the client cares about our past. When the conversation is really intense, introduce our products. We can say we have an investment in digital gold. We can tell them about our passive income.” All the responses are planned, even if the bank gives them trouble with a potential transfer. “For example, ‘with current inflation, the meager interest rates banks offer aren’t enough,’ or ‘since I started using decentralized wallets, I’ve tried to move most of my funds out of the bank,’ or ‘because banks don’t want to lose customers,’” the documents read. Although it seems impossible, the mix of romance and money is successful: “Some victims are not only emotionally involved, they also believe they can make money through this relationship,” says Muzahir.

The age of the potential victims is also crucial to the whole process. “If the victim is around 70 or 80 years old, they try to befriend them or even treat them like a son. The scammers say things like, ‘My father was just like you,’ or ‘When I talk to you, I feel like I’m talking to my father or mother.’ Sometimes they even say they like making friends with older people because they have a lot of life experience to share,” Muzahir explains. But he adds that they then laugh when they find a video of a victim crying in their car because they’ve lost everything. “For younger victims, the most common method is seduction. They give them dreams and promises, like, ‘Next year we’ll meet in Switzerland,’ or ‘I really want to travel to Japan with you.’ They say they’re busy with work now, but first they want to make a lot of money together.”

Muzahir had to pretend he was doing his job. Since his investigations were unsuccessful, he was saddled with fine after fine that he could never pay. Muzahir only helped defraud two people of a few hundred euros and still regrets it. “I was new there, so my job was just to get good clients on Facebook and get them to switch to WhatsApp. Then the boss would start talking to them. Sometimes he guided me, and other times I did the talking,” he explains. The bosses play a crucial role. They are often the only ones who know if someone is a new victim or if they have been scammed before.

The workers have between 10 and 15 Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat accounts, and every day they send five or six friend requests from each account, in addition to comments, messages, and likes. When someone replies, they continue the conversation. It’s a modern and ruthless way to search for gold: trying to separate the sand from the nuggets by sifting through the sieve that is social media. “These people invent new scams every day. I’ve also heard that the mafia is operating outside the Golden Triangle. When everyone speaks out from every place where these scams are happening, there will be a chance to confront them; otherwise, there won’t,” adds Muzahir, with little hope.

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