Podcast Summary: "What the Hack?" Episode 236 – The Con: Part Two, Asian Scam Compounds

Podcast: What the Hack?
Host: Beau Friedlander (DeleteMe)
Episode: 236 – The Con: Part Two, Asian Scam Compounds
Date: January 27, 2026

Overview

This episode continues a deep investigation into Southeast Asian scam compounds, focusing on both the perpetrators and victims of mass crypto investment scams known as "pig butchering." The discussion centers on the mechanics of these scams, their massive financial impact, the human trafficking element driving scam operations, the complicity of tech and crypto companies, and what can be done at individual, organizational, and governmental levels to disrupt these global criminal networks.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dual Nature of Victimhood in Scam Compounds

• Scams Victimize Two Groups: The financial victims—those who lose money—and the trafficked laborers forced to perpetrate the scams under threat.

  “When your phone buzzes with a scam text... there are often two victims in the chat. The person losing money and the person being forced to take it.” – Beau Friedlander [01:23]

2. Scale and Scope of Financial Crimes

• Staggering Amounts Stolen: Criminal organizations behind scam compounds make tens of billions, with $15 billion seized recently from one kingpin and U.S. losses estimated at $6.4 billion reported to the FBI in 2023, possibly as high as $28B.

  “That's not a typo... $15 billion...behind that $15 billion are individual people.” – Beau Friedlander [03:27]
  "It was like $1.4 billion in 2022, went up to 3.3 billion the next year, went up to 6.4 billion the next year." – Gary Warner [09:57]

3. A Personal Story: How Scams Are Personalized and Systemic

• Victim Story: Shreya Dada recounts being lured into a fake relationship and then a crypto scam, losing nearly half a million dollars.

  “By the time she realized the person wasn't real, nearly half a million dollars were gone... This wasn't a moment of bad judgment. It was a process.” – Beau Friedlander [06:46]
  “It shook my belief system about everything I knew.” – Shreya Dada [06:08]

4. "Pig Butchering": The Scams and their Language

• Debate on Terminology: Guests discuss whether the term 'pig butchering' is necessary to drive home the horror, or unnecessarily demeaning for victims.

  “The term pig butchering is exactly what it needs to be. It needs to really be vile and off putting…” – Aaron West [12:38]
  "It really… denigrates the victim so badly." – Kathy Stokes [13:06]

5. Enablers – Corporate and Technological Failures

• Tech Companies’ Complicity: Meta, Telegram, Binance, and Tether are singled out for enabling criminal activity for profit, making insufficient efforts to stop scams.

  “Each of those companies, a material portion of their revenue comes from criminal activity... that is a criminally dependent business model.” – Jacob Sims [25:08]
  “$16 billion knowingly selling ads to scammers. That's our other play here: what if corporate America stood up and did what was responsible…” – David Muir [27:59]

6. Governmental and Global Inaction

• US Funding Cuts Stymie Efforts: The U.S. withdrawal of funding from NGOs in Southeast Asia has crippled efforts to rescue trafficked laborers and combat scam compounds.

  “All of those NGOs have lost all of their funding from the US government, which was previously the primary funding source for all of this.” – Gary Warner [19:31]

• Sanctions as Potential Tools: Multilateral sanctions and law enforcement action, when coordinated, may pressure complicit regimes, particularly as money is stashed globally.

  “If you start to see 2, 5, 10, 50, 100, 150 countries...start to move to sanction and indict the elites...you can meaningfully deter a country from doing this.” – Jacob Sims [31:24]

7. How Scams Have Become Indistinguishable from Legitimate Apps

• Fake Apps, Real Losses: Scam investment platforms often look professional and legitimate, making it immensely hard to spot fraud.

  “Scams don’t look like scams anymore. They look like apps... Fake websites, fake trading platforms, things that live on your phone next to Gmail and your notes app.” – Beau Friedlander [15:00]

8. AI and The Future of Scams

• AI Optimizes, Not Reduces, Human Trafficking: AI is being used in scam compounds to maximize the efficiency of scammers, not to replace them.

  “As AI has advanced, the number of people who are working have, has also advanced.” – Jacob Sims [17:18]
  “With an LLM...speaking in native English over text message [is] almost automatic.” – Jacob Sims [18:23]

9. Hope in Disruption: Individual & Tech-Driven Actions

• Disrupting Infrastructure: Teams like Gary Warner’s are working to identify, flag and take down scam websites & addresses.

  “We've identified, we're tearing them down, we're sending takedown notices...pushing [crypto addresses] out to Chainalysis and Coinbase so that...victims should get a warning.” – David Muir [33:02]

• Spreading Awareness as Action:

  “If I go into this thinking that I'm going to get justice for American victims, that is too lofty...what I do is I split my roles up into places where I think I can make a difference.” – Aaron West [36:27]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Human Cost:

  “They're destroying generational wealth with this crime and too few people understand that this is happening.” – Kathy Stokes [01:39]
  “What they need that hour spent on is who's behind this and how are we going to take it down.” – Aaron West [14:43]

• On Corporate Responsibility:

  "What if corporate America stood up and did what was responsible instead of what was criminal based profiting?" – David Muir [01:16]

• On the Psychological Effect of Victimization:

  “Do I know anything? Do I know if black is black and white is white or up is down or anything? Can I even trust my decision making process? So it turned my world upside down.” – Shreya Dada [06:08]

Important Timestamps & Segments

• [00:50–02:36] – Introduction to scam compounds and human trafficking
• [04:24–06:46] – Shreya Dada's story: from romance scam to massive loss
• [07:51–09:16] – Explaining "pig butchering"/financial grooming and its societal impact
• [09:16–10:34] – The scope of crypto scams in U.S. (Gary Warner)
• [12:38–14:43] – Debate on scam terminology and the psychological perspective
• [17:18–19:11] – The AI question: laborers vs. automation in scam compounds
• [19:21–21:07] – U.S. funding cuts, global inaction, and wider impact
• [25:08–26:26] – Corporate malfeasance: Meta, Binance, Tether, and Telegram’s roles in scam facilitation
• [33:02–36:08] – Concrete disruption efforts: website takedowns, labeling scam addresses, and community action
• [36:08–38:04] – Law enforcement’s struggle: Awareness, scale, and the enormous size of the problem

Actionable Takeaways & Tinfoil Swan

Paranoid Advice Recap:

• If a new “investment” app allows small withdrawals, that’s often bait for a bigger scam.
• Before investing, vet trading platforms and domains: suspiciously new, obscure platforms are likely fake.
• Be wary if a new friend/partner starts discussing marriage or shared wealth early.
• Learn to use blockchain explorers; check if an address is flagged before sending crypto.
• Get your own personal info offline (e.g., with DeleteMe) to prevent being targeted as a lead.

“You make yourself high-hanging fruit, right, instead of low-hanging fruit... Get yourself on the vegan menu. Just make yourself harder to hit.” – Beau Friedlander [End]

Flow and Tone

The episode is urgent but empathetic, mixing personal narrative (Shreya Dada’s story), expert insight (Kathy Stokes, Gary Warner, Aaron West, Jacob Sims), and impassioned calls for systemic change. Technical details are made accessible, and listeners are urged to act—whether by protecting themselves, spreading awareness, or demanding change from tech platforms and policymakers.

For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode delivers a sobering yet actionable look at the entwined human trafficking and financial fraud happening in Southeast Asian scam compounds. It exposes the industrial scale of scams, the complicity (tacit or explicit) of major platforms, why enforcement is tricky, and how regular people can be both victims and disruptors in this transnational crime.

If you’re online and social, you need to be vigilant, and if you have influence (technical or political), now’s the time to use it.